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Blackberry Businesses Networking

BlackBerry's Survival Plan: the Internet of Things 74

Posted by samzenpus from the a-new-basket-for-your-eggs dept.
jfruh writes BlackBerry's smartphone business is famously floundering, but the company isn't betting everything on its new retro physical-keyboard phones. It's also making moves into distributed, embedded, and asset-tracking computing for homes, cars, and businesses, which can all be lumped under the currently trendy "Internet of Things" buzzword umbrella. The company got a head start when it acquired the QNX OS in 2010, which was intended as the basis of a new smartphone OS but which already had credibility in the embedded market.
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BlackBerry's Survival Plan: the Internet of Things More

BlackBerry's Survival Plan: the Internet of Things

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  • How hard is it to reposition a company?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shakrai ( 717556 )

      Somewhere between "impossible" and "as easy as throwing a chair across the room."

      • So I guess the old Microsoft was at the bottom of your chart?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Shakrai ( 717556 )

          The easiest way to visualize Microsoft's business strategy is to envision an ant trapped in a maze. The ant hits a wall, waves her antennae around a bit, picks a totally random direction and tries again. Rinse and repeat until the ant finds her way out of the maze or starves to death.

          • Under Balmer it was "Let's make a half assed copy of whatever Apple was doing a year ago".
          • This literally made my day. Thank you for the image of an ant with a Steve Ballmer head crawling around a maze yelling "Developers, Developers, Developers!!!"

          • That would be an improvement! Their strategy is to follow the white ant because it knows where the food is, and after the white ant takes the food, they look for scraps it left behind. Even when the white ant hits a dead end and spins in circles, they are undeterred in heading over there.

    • Re:Can they do it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:59PM (#48769199)

      I think it depends on the size of the company and more importantly the culture.

      I worked at a much smaller company that did a very effective shift for honestly many of the same reasons. We saw the writing on the wall. Other (much larger) companies were stepping into our niche and basically wiping us out. We couldn't fight them and we knew it.

      Much like Blackberry is doing, we looked at what we were actually good at, and shifted our business around them. Culturally pretty much everyone knew it was that or we were all out of work.

      As the article says, blackberry wasn't always just about phones. They've got some other solid areas (not to mention infrastructure that probably makes even google drool). If their culture supports it, they can probably rebuild themselves around that stuff.

    • Blackberry has incredible resistance to change. That's why they were left in the dust by Apple and Google. They might get around to repositioning the company in ten years but unfortunately they won't be around then.

    • Re:Can they do it? (Score:4, Informative)

      by alen ( 225700 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:29PM (#48769579)

      ask apple

      they went from a computer company to a mobile device company. MS is going all cloud. Amazon went from books to a huge cloud business. IBM doesn't make typewriters any more.

      it's done all the time

      • they went from a computer company to a mobile device company.

        That doesn't make any sense. Apple is still a computer company. That and mobile devices are computers.

        • Nintendo started as a card company. Nokia started as a paper company.

          Blackberry could get into the hogs trading market.

          Not as fancy as selling phones, but I've heard as an industry it really brings home the bacon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kenshin ( 43036 )

      It's better they try and fail than not try at all.

      Just ask Nortel.

      If they're serious about it, and properly examine the assets and tech they already have, I'm sure they can find something they're good at.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      well apparently it was real easy for them to reposition qnx from "king of embedded" to an also-ran for IoT.

      frankly speaking, qnx is unnecessary for IoT and if it comes with a licensing cost.. .. would you choose it? it's not like you have to have it.

  • "The Internet of Things" is so dumb. It was never called "The Internet of Computers" when computers were hooked up, and technically all these "things" have computers in them. And a network exists in the ether between devices; communication. I'm just so tired of this buzz phrase, I cringe every time I hear it. It's like "Information Superhighway", except less relate-able .

    • I can see a hundred little bots fouling up your house with this IofT nonsense. one release, no upgrade path, no thought of security built-in, sell 'em and run. I have several candidates, and there is NOT going to be any RJ45 or wifi permissions for them. period.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Shakrai ( 717556 )

        That's what VLANs are for. It's easy enough to segment your home network into trusted and untrusted devices if the 'untrusted' ones derive usefulness from being internet connected. One can provide them with access to the internet without having access to all of your personal data.

        • except for the personal data that they directly collect, like a video feed, whether anyone is home, whether the alarm is on or not.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by firewrought ( 36952 )

        I can see a hundred little bots fouling up your house with this IofT nonsense. one release, no upgrade path, no thought of security built-in, sell 'em and run. I have several candidates, and there is NOT going to be any RJ45 or wifi permissions for them. period.

        Oh hi! I'm your new LG refrigerator. Before I unlock the doors, please agree to this EULA and wait half-an-hour while I download the latest firmware!

    • I hate the phrase as much as you do, but I'd never seen it like that before.

      You're right, it's like saying "the rail network of stations" or "the interstate highway network of like cities and towns and diners with huge thermometers and all that shit".

  • The Internet of Dead Things (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    BlackBerry CEO: It's not dead - it's pining for the fjords....

  • Cool name, is it taken? (Score:3)

    by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:06PM (#48769331)

    "Buzzword Umbrella Corporation"

    Google: No results found for "Buzzword Umbrella Corporation".

    Quick, someone grab it!

    • 1 result (0.15 seconds)

      Now that I've written it, it exists.

      Hurray! /Zoidberg

    • You usually don't want to be associated with the Umbrella Corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation).

      (\/) (,,,) (\/)

      (Why not Zoidberg?)

  • BlackBerry is fine (Score:3)

    by acoustix ( 123925 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:10PM (#48769381)

    They still have the best mobile management software out there. Citrix, Good, MobileIron, etc can't touch BB's offerings.

    Plus they have QNX which is used in billions of devices around the world. So what if their handhelds aren't popular? Who cares? They will continue to have a niche market in handhelds.

    • Plus they have QNX which is used in billions of devices around the world. So what if their handhelds aren't popular? Who cares? They will continue to have a niche market in handhelds.

      Which doesn't mean much if it doesn't generate that much revenue. They bought QNX for $200 million. There's no way that's what one pays for a business generating lots of profits.

      • And to further support this point. From a Forbes article [forbes.com]:

        However, despite the strong proliferation and installed base, the QNX business is not believed to be very meaningful to BlackBerry’s financial performance (the company does not break out QNX financials). The business generates revenues through the licensing of QNX software products and through the professional services that BlackBerry provides to customers for developing QNX powered devices. Estimates from Bloomberg peg QNX revenues at just about 2% of BlackBerry’s total sales and IHS analysts estimate software licensing fees at a relatively paltry $3 per vehicle.

        So something that is estimated to account for less than even 5% of its revenue is not going to save the company from imploding.

        • Ah...but the killer feature BlackBerry brought to QNX is BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) connectivity. BlackBerry was never a mobile handset company. They were always a mobile communications company that sold two way pagers / phones. You see, BlackBerry has an international network in place. It's no longer needed to support their phones so it is being re-purposed to allow encrypted communication between all those QNX devices out there and a companies BES. Each QNX device connected means a license and eac

      • Seeing how Ford will have QNX in almost all of their cars going forward, I'd say that QNX is a nice little profit for BB.

        • It remains to be seen if they will eventually "win" the car computers system market or if they will do just like they did in the smartphone market, be an early player unable to innovate and becoming irrelevant in less than 10 years.

          • It remains to be seen if they will eventually "win" the car computers system market or if they will do just like they did in the smartphone market, be an early player unable to innovate and becoming irrelevant in less than 10 years.

            As long as reliability and stability remain the key requirements for car computer systems, then Android, iPhone, and Microsoft will never compete. Also, QNX UI is improving as well, so if they have to compete directly on UI, they have a decent chance there as well.

            • I'd say that reliability and stability in car navigation and audio system is just as important as smartphones reliability and stability. We are not talking about ABS, airbags, or other safety-critical car subsystems here.

  • If Blackberry jumps on the Internet Of Things bandwagon then we can finally get our wish of having the term killed, beaten to a pulp, and buried.

  • The funny thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Loopy ( 41728 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:33PM (#48769633) Journal

    I have two family members that use new Blackberries. One has a model from about 14 months ago and my brother just got one about a month ago. They are both somewhat limited in terms of apps but conversely, they both have stupid amounts of battery life and they Just Work(tm). They're business phones so obviously they aren't getting stressed with Youtube/Netflix/etc. Still, it appears to be a solid product, if probably unsexy to the people always on my lawn.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ControlsGeek ( 156589 )

      "Still, it appears to be a solid product, if probably unsexy to the people always on my lawn."
      I still use my Blackberry Tour daily, bought about 5 years ago. Sooner or later it will die and I will replace it with a Blackberry Classic. I really don't associate sex with anything to do with smartphones because I figured out how to get sex before Tinder. My lawn is immaculate.

  • They have been unable to make their smartphones work in the consumer market, and they've burned a lot of bridges with their corporate customers.

    So... given the track record of being unable to judge the market and put out a solid, single product the company was focused on, they expect to succeed at putting out a variety of products with which they have no experience and know nothing about the market?

    Good luck. I expect Waterloo will have some good commercial real estate freed up soon.

  • my gut tells me that there's lots of us out there who miss our bberry keyboard ... whilst still loving the apps that android gives us. I'd pay more than what I do for my samsung for a well made, slide up, vertical keyboard and bberry battery life.
  • Doing their hayday blackberry bought one of the companies who essentially invented the whole idea of internet of things, and a big player in the embedded market(QNX) so they have had a department doing that for a while, just not under the blackberry brand, but since knowing industry details is beyond most of the tech press we get snark and fluffy editorials on weather or not a mobile company can transform itself.

    In essence what your seeing is that blackberry downplay it's old porfolio and tries to live o
  • Android phones allow using BBM free {Blackberry Messenger Free(only internet needed)}, but when it comes to Blackberry smartphones, you have to activate a BBM plan to chat with your friends, and the BBM plan rates are above Rs.199. In this plan you are not allowed to use internet, you can only chat with your friends using the BBM. If you want to use internet you have to activate another internet plan. Where Android phones allow using BBM in your General Internet Plan. So Why Blackberry charges extra to use

  • From the early days, Blackberry has had better mobile security than competitors. Even today, though their app selection is more limited, their permissions model is better.

    I like my Android, but if I'm going to have something integrated into my home or vehicle, I'd go for "more security+reliable" over "pretty with apps"

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