How BlackBerry Blew It

schnell writes "The Globe and Mail is running a fascinating in-depth report on how BlackBerry went from the world leader in smartphones to a company on the brink of collapse. It paints a picture of a company with deep engineering talent but hamstrung by arrogance, indecision, slowness to embrace change, and a lack of internal accountability. From the story: '"The problem wasn't that we stopped listening to customers," said one former RIM insider. "We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did."'"

As Henry Ford said...

[bre_dnd]

If I asked my customers what they wanted, they'd say they wanted a faster horse. Innovation comes from thinking out of the box.

I worked on some mobile e-mail product some 8 years ago. Call it a Blackberry competitor -- it ran on phones like the Palm Treo, Nokia E61 and various Windows Mobile devices. There was rumours of Apple making a phone -- and when it came out, it had no keys... I remember thinking -- how are you ever going to type a message without keys? Well...

Wild-eyed optimism will do you in every time.

[Dzimas]

Blackberry blew it the same way many companies do. Their original OS was antiquated, and so they abandoned it and adopted QNX as the foundation of BlackBerry 10.

That required them to write all of their core apps from the ground up, and they dramatically underestimated the effort required. The result was the disastrous release of the Playbook without an email client. Some say that the decision to release the Playbook instead of a BB10-equipped phone was also a critical error, but there's no way that the company could have released a phone instead -- it would have required some significant components that simply didn't exist when the PlayBook was first rolled out: a contact manager, dialing software, BBM, SMS, and of course email.

Re:"We believed we knew better what customers need

[MightyMartian]

Indeed. The problem is deeper than daring to assume one knew better than the customer what the customer wanted. The failure, I think, was that Blackberry had boxed themselves into a corner by marketing themselves as a business solution. Fundamentally it was a failure of marketing. Apple's genius isn't really the devices or the operating system, though they're pretty well done, but rather in being able to use that acumen to guide customer choices. As much as we all like to think we're driven strictly by utilitarian requirements, the fact is that people like shiny bobbles over dull functional ones.

In many respects the first iPhone didn't have much to offer over your average Blackberry, but it looked cool, and more importantly, was built on top of hte marketing and technology of the iPod. Apple already had a leg up in having produced a killer device and knew how to extend that to the smartphone. Basically, the Blackberry become the staid competitor, functional to be sure, but lacking the "hip" factor. It became like a snowball for Apple. More customers meant more developers, more developers meant bigger app store, bigger app store meant more customers.

You still see the Crackberry types not getting it. They talk about things like real keyboards, about BES and other enterprise tools. They all became irrelevant, particularly when Apple licensed ActiveSync, completely undermining the whole enterprise justification for Blackberry. Now you could connect to your Exchange email and calendar. Sure, maybe it wasn't quite as nifty as the BB one, but it didn't matter. iOS became like many successful technologies; good enough for certain tasks to eliminate any particular handicap from lack of complete functionality.

Microsoft has suffered a similar fate with its mobile offerings. Too late to the party, wrongheaded marketing that indicates that not only the engineers and dev teams don't get what customers want, but neither does the marketing team.

Android's route to success has been somewhat different. Rather than trying to out-hip Apple, Google has managed to get Android on everything from high end smartdevices right down to bargain basement devices. By seizing the low-end, it has gained massive penetration.

Blackberry and Microsoft simply don't have a lot of room to smack into the market, and for Blackberry, that really doesn't have any other product besides its phones and BES, there isn't any other monster divisions to keep the whole show afloat until there is some penetration.

Re:Who were BB's customers? Carriers.

[CohibaVancouver]

...but he was right. In North America, the *carriers* are the cell phone manufacturers' customers, not the end-users. In the USA, Samsung has something like six customers.

A little understood fact is the iPhone's secret to success is Jobs managed to get AT&T on board.

Re:Not listening to the customer.

[Dzimas]

I bought a deeply discounted PlayBook, and I think they did a lot of things right. The hardware was top-notch and the multitasking OS stood up well against Android and iOS at that point. If BB10 had been released a year earlier with proper core apps (email, contacts, BBM) and attracted top-tier apps, it could well have been a major competitor.

Re:Wild-eyed optimism will do you in every time.

[Animats]

Blackberry blew it the same way many companies do. Their original OS was antiquated, and so they abandoned it ... That required them to write all of their core apps from the ground up, and they dramatically underestimated the effort required.

Apple blew it that way, too. More than once. The original Mac was a cool toy, but too slow, and lacked a hard drive. IBM built their PC market share selling DOS machines with a hard drive to businesses. The user interface was ugly, but there was no need to change floppies.

After Apple finally built up the Mac into a usable machine, with a hard drive and enough RAM to get something done, they had a few good years, then blew it again. The transition from the Motorola 68000 to the PowerPC broke all old applications that used floating point. Few of the engineering software vendors even bothered to port to PowerPC. Apple market share dropped to single digits. Then Apple tried to dump their antiquated MacOS for a new "OS 8", called Copeland. That required rewriting applications again. It wasn't realized within Apple that Apple no longer had the clout to tell developers what to do. Apple had to go with a different "OS 8" borrowed from NeXT, which cost them a year.

Apple's market share in desktops didn't break out of single digits again until after the mobile devices became popular.

How Blackberry could remain relevant

[Mr. Sketch]

Blackberry could succeed on their name, if they tweaked their brand a little and adopt a more 'Samsung' approach. Their name is already synonymous with enterprise level email, service and solutions, so capitalize on that, just with a different platform.

• 1. Create an enterprise hardened version of Android
• 2. Integrate with their existing Blackberry Enterprise Server (and of course other email providers, but provide a good business case for using their services like uptime, security, no NSA snooping, etc
• 3. Provide a compatibility layer/VM for existing Blackberry apps on their devices

This would provide end users with a standard Android platform just with more security features (maybe fingerprint, retina scan, whatever, and market it for security conscious individuals), and it would provide enterprises with a trusted platform.

Individuals will still get an Android platform with all those apps, and Businesses will get a platform that plugin into a standard Android ecosystem.

Anyways, those are my thoughts about how they could still make it work

BTW, Blackberry, if you're looking for a new CEO or VP-level manager to implement this solution, I'm available.

Delays killed BlackBerry

[Dynamoo]

The critical thing that killed BlackBerry was the huge delays in getting anything done. As the article points out, they spent a whole year arguing about their BB10 devices while competitors were eating there lunch, and when they finally got to market it was TWO YEARS too late. They'd been in a dead end for years with no strategy to get out of it.. and when they finally did the smart thing and bought QNX it took *forever* to get a decent working product out.

And if it wasn't late.. it wasn't finished properly. Like the Storm. And then the PlayBook was both late *and* not finished properly.

Nokia found itself in the same dead end, but at least it had some sort of strategy when it jumped off the infamous "burning platform". I think that Apple is at risk of the same pitfalls.. they are a much more defensive, conservative company than they were six years ago. The only people who really seem to have a clue are Samsung, and they've got all the appeal of the Borg collective as far as I'm concerned..

Re:Dealt with them early on

[narcc]

Before Apple, they had one of the best mobile browsers. Today, it's the best on the market. Apple's browser, in contrast, is now years behind everyone else.

"The problem wasn't that we stopped listening to customers, [...] We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did."

Sounds an awful lot like Apple as well...

Really, Apple today looks an awful lot like RIM in 2008 -- except that they're doing even less. Apple has taken 'resting on their laurels' to a whole new level.

Can you predict what will happen to Apple over the next few years? I have a pretty good idea.

Re:"We believed we knew better what customers need

[Bigbutt]

I received a Blackberry when I started at the company I currently work at, 6 years ago. At the time, I had a bog standard flip phone. Didn't even have a camera (wasn't allowed in the building at IBM). After using the Blackberry for a few years, I was interested in getting one for myself in part for internet access. Unfortunately the web browsing was horrible. Hard to navigate and difficult to manage my bookmarks. That's what had me reluctant to pull the trigger. I heard about the iPhone and finally bought a pair (Valentine's Day special) of 3GS iPhones. 32 Gig for me, 16 Gig for my wife (now ex and we're stuck on the same plan until she upgrades from a iPhone 4). Even though I hated the "keyboard", I still used it and kept using it up until a few weeks ago when I replaced it with an iPhone 5 (not the c or s, just the 5). Plus I'll replace the broken screen on the 3GS and use it to play music (iPhones don't bounce well even on carpet :) ).

At work we've replaced the Blackberries with a choice of iPhone or Android. I turned mine in for an Android based RAZR. It's a bit different than the iPhone. Still has a keyboard problem (I've ordered a keyboard case for my iPhone) which frustrates me to no end at times. I find I'd prefer to have the Blackberry back for work e-mail since I _must_ respond to work but I can take a mental break when the iPhone keyboard bothers me. While the internet experience was sub-par, I at least get my e-mail quickly and at the same time I get my SMS pages from servers. Heck, right now my Android doesn't even work at the office. Not the Android's fault. The carrier doesn't have an appropriate antenna/repeater in the building so I have to go outside to get e-mails. Which is not really a problem since I have my desktop (a MacBook Pro :) ). The battery power of a Blackberry far exceeds the Android or iPhone though. I only had to plug my Blackberry in once a week where the work Android has to be plugged in every night. The new iPhone can last a few days but the 3GS was down to a daily charge too.

So experience wise, I still prefer the iPhone for personal stuff and I'd really like the Blackberry back for work.

[John]