BlackBerry Really Struggling In Android Market (cnet.com) 92
Once an icon in the smartphone business, BlackBerry is having a hard time transitioning to Android. According to a report on CNET, the company's BlackBerry Priv Android smartphone, citing a high-level executive at AT&T, is really struggling. From the report: AT&T offered a more detailed account of why the Priv has disappointed. BlackBerry and the carrier expected to see demand for an Android phone with a physical keyboard. Instead, most of the buyers were BlackBerry loyalists, the executive said. Those faithful, however, struggled with the transition from the BlackBerry operating system to the Android operating system, leading to a higher-than-expected rate of return. BlackBerry's decision to market the phone as a high-end device also hurt its prospects, the executive said. The Priv initially sold unlocked for $699, above the starting price of the iPhone 6S, which sells for $650. Few premium phones have fared well beyond devices from Apple and Samsung.
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Re:That headline is three words too long (Score:4)
Yeah, and it's sad to see. These guys used to be on the forefront of mobile innovation.
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Greed.. corruption, incompetence, beaureacracy (however you speel that).. It's no wonder they went downhill so fast. I worked there back in the days and left in time when it was all getting way too obvious.
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Re:That headline is three words too long (Score:5, Insightful)
No it isn't. They thought they had the market, acted like Android/iPhone wasn't a threat, created bloated server based software and charged a fortune for it, and expected to thrive.
I had a Blackberry, and as a customer, I couldn't have been more insulted in the nickel and dime approach Blackberry took to me.
"You want access to GPS built into your phone? Great pay us $5 month"
The moment iPhones came out, they were in trouble. The moment Android got mainstream, they were doomed. They failed to adjust to the marketplace and rested on their laurels. THEN after they became an afterthought, they tried to re-invent themselves while maintaining proprietary control of their phones (Like Apple), without any of the things Apple had going for them.
At one point, it was BB or Palm for "smart" phones. They both failed to innovate and got caught with their pants down.
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"You want access to GPS built into your phone? Great pay us $5 month"
That was the carriers. Same with WiFi - carriers wanted it disabled because it was taking away revenue from data sales. We built an entire provisioning system allowing carriers to decide which features to allow and which to disallow. We built a massive, complex infrastructure in order to meet carrier demands.
Apple changed everything because they walked in and changed the conversation completely. Want our phone? Play by our rules. BlackBerry didn't have that luxury, and when we tried to flex that muscl
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BB had the entire corporate market to themselves. If they had bargained with the carriers the way Apple did, they could have gotten somewhere. I don't believe for a moment that they cared enough to do so.
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Their stuff was crap. Like that "business tablet" that was going to take over the enterprise, and blow the iPad out of the water. It took what, a year, after it was released to finally get a mostly-working standalone email client?
Virtually all their phones were primarily using parts from the last-year bins, or the two-years ago bins, at least since the iPhone was released.
The 'dual-ceo' thing didn't help either..
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Apple's special treatment I can understand, with Job's reality distortion field and behind-the-scenes arm twisting backed up by the Apple juggernaut. But what about all those little crappy little landfill Android makers back then? Somehow, they were getting smartphones on the market with functional GPS and functional E-mail, at no additional cost.
You sound like an engineering-type, and it sounds like the engineering side of things knew what were the right decisions that needed to be made. But I suspect t
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Apple did change the rules, but it did so by getting a bit lucky.
Remember, they offered the iPhone to Verizon first, and VZ didn't want to play by Apple's new rules. AT&T reluctantly agreed, because it didn't think Apple had anything useful. The licensing deal giving AT&T exclusive to iPhone was enough to almost kill AT&T's network, which needed HUGE upgrades to match the data demands for iPhone.
Once Apple's appeal went viral, BB had time to innovate, and get a new product to market, on all four
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That isn't trivial, there have been some embarrassing failures(eg. what happened when Microsoft tried to upgrade the SAN backing Sidekick services) and Blackberry worked with some unbelievable number of carriers, each with their assorted warts, all over the world.
What they weren't at all prepared for was the emergence of silicon good enough that you could (for the most part)
and they sat on their smugness (Score:2)
news flash... if it's on the market, it's technically obsolete. if it's 18 months old, it's functionally obsolete. if at that point you start saying things like "nobody can touch us, we're so far ahead," you are now a laughing stock. BBM in car slabs seems to be working, as it allows iWhatever and droidWhatever to run users thingies. the rest of the outfit... dust, dust in the wind.
Same Would Have Happened to Nokia (Score:1)
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I get where you are coming from but unlike Blackberry I do wonder if Nokia had the design chops to compete. Blackberry made awful phones with stupid keyboards that were hard to use. They were successful for a time because they were the only game in town when it came to a "smart" phone, but they got their ass handed to them when someone (apple) came along and made a real, modern smart phone that was fun and easy to use and gave a mobile web experience that was more on par with a desktop than anything that
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Looking at their issues bringing Maemo (eventually MeeGo and now Mer, which tells you something right there) to bear suggests that they had deep
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This is very true... but could they not have managed a cheeper phone than the competition, or a more bullet proof one for the same money? Its hard to say, they certainly had hardware talent.
You are absolutely right about the whole internal OS thing, that was a mess and it does imply deeper problem but we never really got to see how deep those problems went. It could be that their arrogance would have been their downfall just like it was with blackberry... The fact that they tried to stick with their own O
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They were selling more phones than any other company on earth when Elop joined up. They had plenty of vision and a ridiculously large product range when Elop showed up.
The "smartphone" focus, where for some reason they were seen as a failure despite being number two or three in that sector, is a distraction.
It was a very blatant corporate raid for the purpose of driving down Nokia's price as a prelude to MS buying it out for the bits they wanted. Elop did not have the track history to b
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Re:Same Would Have Happened to Nokia (Score:5, Interesting)
Blackberry made awful phones with stupid keyboards that were hard to use.
I don't agree with this. Blackberry's messaging UI (the most important part to me) always made more sense to me than the smartphones that made you dig all over the place for email, SMS, other email, notifications, etc. Nothing could be easier. And the keyboards were good. Lots of people swore by them. Not as many people bought the smaller form-factor phones with the abbreviated keyboards, so they probably didn't realize BlackBerry had some of the best predictive text on the market. There were three letters to a key and the device almost always knew which one I meant.
Where BlackBerry's hardware started to look shoddy was in some of the later decisions they made. When they moved from the rocker-style switches to the trackballs, the trackballs were notoriously prone to failure. When they replaced them with the tiny trackpads, nobody really liked those (and they, too, would fail). Meanwhile they were trying to compete on volume by lowering prices, so the overall build quality decreased. Then they went on a tangent with some misguided ad campaign that seemed aimed at college students, rather than the professional and government users that had always been BlackBerry's core audience. By the time I finally bought an Android phone, it was because I just plain didn't see anything on the market from BlackBerry that I wanted to buy. It's almost like I didn't dump them, they dumped me.
Re: Same Would Have Happened to Nokia (Score:3)
It couldn't have been much worse than what did happen. Nokia was a very strong consumer brand, a high quality Nokia Android could've been a success. At least they'd have been in control of their own destiny instead of being tied to Microsoft's own failed efforts.
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You obviously don't know the story. Nokia was so deeply in debt that they couldn't survive without the huge cash infusion from Microsoft. Nokia was very lucky there was a bigger idiot they could trick into buying the company, saving their creditor
Re: Same Would Have Happened to Nokia (Score:2)
Were they? Missed that one. You wouldn't happen to have a citation for that? 18 months without anything to sell probably did more damage than any poor decisions before that. They failed to learn from the mistakes of other mobile manufacturers when they got into bed with the great destroyer.
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There's plenty out there if you look:
http://seekingalpha.com/articl... [seekingalpha.com]
Re: Same Would Have Happened to Nokia (Score:2)
Did you even read the article. It talks about cash reserves not debt in 2012 and this is two years after Stephen Elop was hired. Had they stuck with Meego or gone Android who knows what would've happened. Instead Elop destroyed them with a succession of terrible decisions including cancelling smartphones that were selling well and not having a new product for 18 months at a time when the smartphone market was booming. Nokia was an incredibly strong consumer brand. A good CEO could've turned them around. Ins
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Doesn't sound like you comprehended. Your stocks don't get downgraded to junk status if you've got lots of cash, and there's no problem repaying bonds (bond ARE DEBT, btw). Though it was a bit closer to the takeover date that their cash reserves really ran out. Like I said, there's plenty of info out there. But if you're determined to live in your fantasy world, I'm not going to try stopping you.
Re: Same Would Have Happened to Nokia (Score:2)
I'm not living in a fantasy world. Elop destroyed Nokia. It wasn't in that kind of trouble before he joined and started wrecking it. You clearly don't realise how popular Nokia phones were and how badly Elop and Microsoft ruined them. They might've died anyway but who knows. They're certainly gone now. Elop did his job too well.
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You can look at RIM/Blackberry to see where all other non-Apple, non-Android smartphone makers ended up. The feature phone market dried up, ending Nokia's most successful niche. The company's downward slide had already started before Elop signed-on. "The company's board was widely seen to be searching for a turn-around CEO." [pcworld.com] Note that you don't need a "turn-around" if your company is doing great... Or if you don't believe that, you can just look at the charts [qz.com] and see the decline BEFORE Elon was hired
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It's all about timing. Nokia could have survived if they entered the Android market from the start.
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Android was one of the things seriously considered before Elop's "burning platform".
The only problem that matters... (Score:3)
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Too expensive is the big problem but it's not the only one. Android has seen many attempts to sell devices with physical keyboard's, outside the ultra low end, where a keyboard can improve on a poor and small touchscreen, the market rejected them all.
For all we claim to want them, on modern devices we don't need them and once that sinks in we choose the smaller, lighter version. I even carry a keyboard case with my tablet yet never bother using it as anything but a case and kickstand.
Blackberry fulfilled a
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You don't technically *need* both a keyboard and a mouse on your computer, either (one can *technically* do everything the other can, just a heck of a lot slower). Slide-out keyboards are a lot more convenient for enough things that I really, truly don't understand the hate people have for them. I'm going to be really sad when I can no longer replace my slide-out phone with another one when it dies. It's not really that much smaller or lighter than it would be without it, and way smaller and way lighter tha
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People far and wide are embracing their stupidity and incompetence. Everything should 'just work' without having to think about it. If they don't get it, it's the app's/device's fault. Not theirs. Never theirs.
Shitty typing has always been around, but virtual keyboards have shifted the responsibility of outputting accurately spelled words to autocorrection mechanisms. Physical keyboards represent a threat to people who are incapable of typing something without 'autocorrect' looking over their shoulder and b
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Which is why I still have a Nokia N900. Using ssh on a virtual keyboard on a touch screen is a pain.
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Decent: yes. High-end: no.
The Desire HD was released together with the Desire Z and had 256MB more RAM (which made a huge difference at that time) and a better SoC:
http://www.gsmarena.com/compar... [gsmarena.com]
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Yeah, the pricing on the Priv is ridiculous. It's a testament of either a lack of humility or of a lack of business acumen.
I know a lot of people who are ready for 'something new' and really want to give the Priv a chance, just not at its current ultra high-end price.
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Would I love to have a speedy android phone with a narrow-format blackberry-style physical keyboard? Yep.
Those already exist. My Motorola XPRT is like that. It's also a world phone with two sim card slots.
And there are several others. That market niche is already filled if you ask me.
The problem with BlackBerry is that they're not really Android phones. Sure, they can run Android, but all the security features they have that prevent sharing outside of BBM, that prevent you from installing custom keyboards (assuming it's not your company phone), and the lack of official Google applications and APIs makes it mor
Re:Hi Blackberry (Score:5, Funny)
They can still watch you, Robert.
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I currently use a Dumbphone. I would be in the market for a smartphone only if: 1) It has a physical keyboard. 2) It does not require touch screen use. 3) Its OS and Programs are not made by companies who use my data for their profits. 4) The OS and Programs have not been back doored by government agencies. 5) The company who makes the phones and OS does not cooperate with government agencies when they ask to weaken security and encryption.
From the looks of it, I'll be keeping my dumb prepaid phone forever.
1 and 2 you have with the dumb phone, but the rest? Not so much.
Like it or not that dumb phone still runs software/firmware that your carrier can upgrade remotely if they choose, runs apps that can track you for the government if they wish. You may be less of a target due to the dumb phone's lesser capabilities, but that doesn't mean you are getting the security you seek from it. The only way to get all you want is to ditch the phone and most modern communications systems...
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His phone doesn't have a microphone and it doesn't link up to towers. It says "Fisher-Price" on the back next to the picture of Elmo. Elmo has been modified to remove the eyeballs.
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But you answer it when he hands it to you... ;)
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I'd say "Get a Jolla and a TOHKBD", but seems the guy making the keyboard went on vacation to Chile and not been heard from since.
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1) Physical Keyboard, how quaint. I can't stand physical keyboards once I learned "Swype" style typing.
2) You obviously like pushing buttons. That's kinda cute.
3) You can get a phone, put Cyanogen on, and never touch Google, or Apple. Good luck having it be useful. But seeing you only use a feature phone, you don't want any of that new fangled tools like maps and stuff on your phone.
4) Compile your own version of Android after reviewing the code. Its all there. Oh wait, you're just saying "I'm lazy, and sub
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You like swype typing, fine. Though, don't talk about things you don't know. I loved my physical keyboard because I could just launch anything on android without even looking at my phone.
On the home screen, just type the name of any contact and type enter. Will go to that contact. Type any app name .. will launch it.
Re: Hi Blackberry (Score:1)
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I thought the most common result of a severed head injury was near-instant death. Just ask Ned Stark.
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That, magically, Blackberry is supposed to commit to and compete with a marketplace that has offered 1080p, N wireless, wimax, NFC, and an open API with a product that still requires a hobbled network of randomly unavailable email proxies for its devices explicit use.
Uh oh, it looks like you don't know what you're talking about.
The last devices to go through RIM's NOC were the old BlackBerries. The ones running BlackBerry 10 didn't, nor do the Android BlackBerries.
I was really looking forward to this phone... (Score:3)
I was really looking forward to this phone... but it failed to deliver, and I returned it.
The main problems I had with it were:
- Overpriced.
- Ran VERY hot.
- Crappy build quality. Creaky / loose bottom.
- Didn't really like that it was a slider, would prefer if it wasn't.
- Single mono speaker under the bottom grill? Really?
- Crappy camera
Pros:
- Effectively ran stock android, which was amazing!
- Tiled app switcher instead of the shitty rolodex android uses.
Still considering to buy one (Score:3)
Because, at least here in Europe, there simply is no other phone with a hardware keyboard. Not even Motorola marketed their Photon Q here. Thing is, I'd always prefer a design like Motorola's to the BlackBerry, with the keyboard on the small side, and I'd prefer a smaller phone, too, but the Priv is still is better than no hardware keyboard at all...
Probably going to buy a used one, though, since new ones are too expensive indeed.
The community became toxic at the end (Score:3)
As a Canadian, I should be more upset about this, but the BlackBerry community had become extremely elitist and and toxic near the end of BlackBerry's success and I have no sympathy.
Sometimes I would post reasonable questions in various places, including BlackBerry's official forums, and I would get ridiculed. I had a Z10 and a Q10 for a short while (testing for my company), and it was even still a problem at that point. I switched to Android (Nexus devices) and haven't looked back.
One very specific example: I had a friend's BB curve and they had forgotten the password. I asked on the forums how they could still login to BlackBerry (they had the account password, just not the phone's) and maybe somehow back it up (maybe via USB). I was accused of stealing the device and laughed at. My friend tried to remember, but after 5 guesses the device wiped itself and there's no way to recover it. Ever.
I get security, but come on, there were photos on there that they really wanted and there was literally no recovery process, and the community was shit. So I'm not upset by this. All those toxic supporters can go fuck themselves.
BB10 is a great mobile OS (Score:3)
I have tried switching to Android and iOS and couldn't do it. I lost too much integration between my main apps. The Hub is where I live the most followed by calendar, contacts, remember, browser, twitter, maps and weather app. Occasionally I use VMware Horizon View. That's pretty much all I do. I don't play games and I rarely use other apps (I have access to the google play store via Snap). The BB10 OS is intuitive, responsive and completely integrated.
I would like to stay on BB10 for my next device, but I know that's probably not possible.
Their biggest failure with Android. (Score:4, Insightful)
People who see me with a Classic ask why I don't just get Priv or any other Android phone. They just don't get my kind of nerd. I have no allegiance to the BlackBerry brand past BB10. It's one of the greatest operating systems\interface I have ever had the pleasure of using.
I get that their **dying, but I will use my Classic until it is no longer supported.
**Still buying their cheap ass stock just in case : )
Give me a physical keyboard (Score:2)
Yes, I *do* want a physical keyboard. I know there isn't that much demand for phones with physical keyboards anymore, but there is still some. I absolutely want to know that when my current phone dies, I'll be able to replace it with another phone with a physical keyboard.
My current phone cost about 90 bucks, though, and I'm not going to pay like 8 times more for my next one. I'm also not a big fan of the blackberry style keyboard - the form factor I like is the slide-out kind where the keyboard puts the ph
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I LOVED my HTC Universal , I actually had two in a row. Great keyboard and a rotatey screen so you could use it like a phablet. If someone made a multigigahertz model I'd snap that right up : https://www.mobilegazette.com/... [mobilegazette.com]
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Indeed. BB OS 10 (being bases on QNX) is really snappy and nice. Since they dropped that now, they have lost any reason to stop QNX from doing what it can do really well. But with the current stupidity at the head of BB, they will probably just drag QNX down with them.
The mistake was in the audience (Score:3)
Before the phone was released to all carriers I went to a T-mobile store to ask about it and the store representative actually laughed at me for being interested in a phone made by blackberry. Also, the representative at the store I eventually bought my phone from actively tried to sell me a samsung, despite my coming in for the blackberry specifically.
Unfortunately, the name is also stupid... they should've just kept it at "venice" that whole privilege/privacy thing is a turn-off.
I see lots of posts here saying things like "I want a physical keyboard." So do I. That's why I bought this phone. In a market economy, we have to vote with our dollars. The problem is that this vote costs a lot of dollars.
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You hit the nail on the head. If it weren't for a $200 "loyal customer" incentive I wouldn't have bought my Priv. That said, I'm not sorry I did. BB10 was pretty good, not nearly as synergistic as WebOS, but very usable and a far cry better than Android's jump from app to app approach. Unfortunately, there was a dearth of apps and the Android emulator only partially filled the bill. The Hub implementation on Android is getting better with each release, but it is still a far cry from the experience on B
"Struggling" is an understatement (Score:3)
Long time mobile admin here, working for a sizeable law firm (one of the former BlackBerry's bread-and-butter markets)
We went from over 1000 OS7 devices (Bold, Torch, Curve and the like) in 2008/2009 to a current mix of 950+ iOS devices and 150 or so OS10 devices (Z10, Q10, Classic, Passport) devices today.
Priv is not even a factor in this mix, despite us being ready for it on day one by installing BES12 late last year and getting a pack of "Gold Premium - Android For Work" CALs.
Since Nov/Dec 2015 up until today (early June), we got exactly 6 requests to activate Priv. Six.
Four in the first couple of weeks after the release, two after Christmas. That's it.
Out of those 6, 3 users are now admitting they made a mistake (old school BlackBerry users who went from Bold 9900 to Q10/Classic, bought the Priv because it said "BlackBerry" on it, with no research into what they were getting themselves into)
They are now looking into either going back to Classic/Passport (while it's still available) or kicking the tires on the iPhone 6.
The remaining 150 BB10 users are basically waiting for their contracts to expire, then having no option to upgrade to new BB10 device (since they will be essentially EOL) the expectation is that pretty much all of them will move to iPhone.
Perhaps they should have been more dev-friendly (Score:2)
A root-friendly version of the Priv would have at least mitigated the damage.
The hub was great (Score:2)
The Blackberry Hub was the best feature of the BB10 phones, and by switching to Android they lost it (going by the reviews the app gets on the Android store). Good news is you can buy a Z30 for $200 now, but it'll die pretty soon, Facebook doesn't work anymore, and WhatsApp will stop supporting it in the next few months. They got too distracted with the weird hardware stuff (like the physical keyboard, old people would have gotten used to the touchscreen), BB10 is a great OS.