AHC: Keep BlackBerry Going Strong

[SealTheRealDeal]

Remember back when RIM was king of smart phones? Yeah didn't think so.

However, they, and their operating systems (BlackBerryOS and BlackBerry10) were pretty strong competitors in the late 2000s-early 2010s. Yet they continued losing market share to Apple and Android, and with the release of the BlackBerry Priv (an Android device) in 2015 they more or less bowed out of the race. Not long later, they bowed out of hardware development as well in 2016*, and now the company is software only.

So, is there any way to keep RIM as a strong third contender with Android and Apple?

*all later BlackBerry phones are made by "BlackBerry Mobile" (which is basically just the physical keyboard division of TCL Communication), or by Optiemus (which to the best of my knowledge exclusively services India).

 

[Aloha]

I think one way would be to just outright get rid of Apple, perhaps having it die off in the 90s? Perhaps smaller phones and even flip phones would still be popular because they wouldn't have to be pressured into upgrading technologically to keep up with rivals?

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

I think one way would be to just outright get rid of Apple, perhaps having it die off in the 90s? Perhaps smaller phones and even flip phones would be more popular because they wouldn't have to be pressured into upgrading technologically to keep up with rivals?

So kill the "slate phone" revolution before it even happens?

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Steve Jobs' "cancer" kicks in early and he dies in '05 or '06.

 

[Fearless Leader]

The most realistic would be for them to phase the physical keyboard ASAP once the iPhone comes out. An earlier transition could preserve enough market share for them to remain competitive.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

The most realistic would be for them to phase the physical keyboard ASAP once the iPhone comes out. An earlier transition could preserve enough market share for them to remain competitive.

Yeah they needed to get their touch screen capabilities off the ground fast, and transition to (alt?)BB10 sooner. OTL their first all touch phone (the BlackBerry Torch 9860) came out in 2011 which is well after the launch of the super successful iPhone 4, and it still ran the old BlackBerry OS, making it a very dated and underwhelming entry to the slate phone wars. It wouldn't be until 2013 that they really came swinging with the Z10, and by that point the app devs knew where the market was effectively damning BB10's app store to be forever barren.

On a different note, could RIM claw back some market share by licensing BB10 to other hardware brands? Android of course does that to great success, and (now that they no longer make operating systems) BlackBerryLTD (RIM's successor) licenses out their software all the time.

 

[IndefatigableRN]

Remember that a lot of people (particularly in law, business and government) preferred the keyboard (I know I did - and still do).

I think part of the problem is that they tried to compete with Apple and Samsung on personal phones. They just couldn’t really compete and ended up losing the business/government users. Maybe if they stay focused on making the best possible business phone, it might give them the edge. I agree more generally that it will be a tough battle against the bigger players.

 

[marathag]

BBs were a pain on the ass to deploy in companies, vs the later Android and Apple efforts. The home user, it wasa bit better, but corporate is where they made their money. I was glad when I didn't have to mess with BBs anymore in corporate land. It was bliss in comparison doing Apple for deployment, even with early Ios.

 

[Simon]

The most realistic would be for them to phase the physical keyboard ASAP once the iPhone comes out. An earlier transition could preserve enough market share for them to remain competitive.

I'm not so sure – the physical keyboard was incredibly popular with their users, if you get rid of that aside from annoying people you lose a large part of what makes them unique and become the same as any other non-Apple competitor. I'd argue for a hybrid model, a physical keyboard with a touchscreen above it. A quick search suggests that the Curve was 6 mm shorter, 1 mm narrower, and 6 mm thicker than the first generation iPhone; the screen looks to be the same width but only half as tall. It would mean taller handset to match, or get near, it but there seems to be some space that could be shaved off above and below our timeline's screen so I don't think it would be too outrageous.

I think part of the problem is that they tried to compete with Apple and Samsung on personal phones. They just couldn’t really compete and ended up losing the business/government users.

That would be my suggestion. As I mentioned over in the other thread concentrate on the top end of the market, if you want to dip up your toe into the more mass market end then do so via something like a secure messaging application such as Signal and Telecom. Perhaps look at trying to provide phones that meet government security specifications, you won't sell masses but it provides a certain cachet to the standard models.

BBs were a pain on the ass to deploy in companies versus the later Android and Apple efforts. The home user, it was a bit better, but corporate is where they made their money. I was glad when I didn't have to mess with BBs anymore in corporate land. It was bliss in comparison doing Apple for deployment, even with early iOS.

Interesting, I had been under the impression that they were fairly good at the corporate side of things. If they want to concentrate on that segment then it's something they'd have to improve. The most obvious time would be the suggested move to a hybrid model and having to update or replace the operating system for that. How you achieve this, outside Lazaridis and Balsillie being run over in a freak Zamboni accident, I'm not sure.

 

[Electric Monk]

How BlackBerry Blew It
by Sean Silcoff, Jacquie McNish, and Steve Ladurantaye
The Globe and Mail

Maybe when Verizon approaches RIM, BlackBerry executives admit they don’t know how to make a consumer smartphone and so they buy Palm alongside Elevation Partners?

RIM/Verizon launch the Pré with all the resources that went to Motorola Droid and BlackBerry Storm IOTL…

 

[marathag]

Interesting, I had been under the impression that they were fairly good at the corporate side of things.

Integration with Server 2003 running Exchange was a pain to setup, then not as stable as hoped after configuration.
Such a pain, that when the iPhone 3G was out in Fall, 2008, I recommended to the IT department switch everyone over after my group experiment with our servers
And I hated Apple products then, but so much easier to get secur email going than the Hoops with Blackberry for integration into Exchange
Apple did indeed, 'just worked'

 

[trash80]

Blackberry 10 seemed pretty nice with it's QNX (which is good technology) underpining but it was too late. Maybe RIM buys QNX 5 years earlier (2004 instead of to Harman as happened IOTL) and a QNX based Blackberry OS comes out in 2005 or 6.

 

[Electric Monk]

a QNX based Blackberry OS comes out in 2005 or 6.

The iPhone doesn’t come out until 2007, there’s nothing to copy on the UI front so a 2006 QNX phone would be a lot like a 2006 OTL phone.

It would presumably speed up their post-iPhone projects, but QNX underpinnings wouldn’t (for instance) save the Storm.

To Mr. Lazaridis, a life-long tinkerer who had built an oscilloscope and computer while in high school, the iPhone was a device that broke all the rules. The operating system alone took up 700 megabytes of memory, and the device used two processors. The entire BlackBerry ran on one processor and used 32 MB. Unlike the BlackBerry, the iPhone had a fully Internet-capable browser.

The product [Storm] was months late, hitting the market just before U.S. Thanksgiving in 2008. Many customers hated it. The touchscreen, RIM's first, was awkward to manipulate. The product ran on a single processor and was slow and buggy. Mr. Balsillie put on a brave face, declaring the launch to be "an overwhelming success," but sales lagged the iPhone and customer returns were high.

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

Make them early adopters of Android.

 

[Blue cat]

BBs were a pain on the ass to deploy in companies, vs the later Android and Apple efforts. The home user, it wasa bit better, but corporate is where they made their money. I was glad when I didn't have to mess with BBs anymore in corporate land. It was bliss in comparison doing Apple for deployment, even with early Ios.

Interesting... I was involved in some of the very first corporate BlackBerry deployments and found the transition to Apple products to be a bit of hassle.

My $.02 worth... Just my opinion...

In the early years BB did a good job in making products that appealed to corporate folks such as myself.. Later Apple seemed to do better maketing a product that appealed to consumers. Eventually consumers wanted to use Apple products at work and certain corporate folks like myself eventually begrudgingly decided to allow IPhones to access the corporate systems

For a number of years I used to travel with a corporate issued BB and my personal Apple products (at times along with a mix of personally owned and corporate issued cellular and sattelite stuff for use in very remote areas..) of course most users just wanted to cary a single device, and the iPhone often appealed to those users.

My black berry never let me down, I could snap in spare batteries while my colleagues with iPhones were scrambling to find a way to charge their phone. I could easily use the keyboard while wearing suitable work gloves, and the cellular radio often seemed to sniff out a signal from somewhere when other devices couldn't

During a long ride crammed into a 4x4 while being driven thru a desert in the middle of no where, I could keep working while my colleagues with iPhones were apparently out of power and or unable to find a signal

Edit to add:
The camera in my last BB also worked with IR illumination. That feature came in handy on a few occasions as well

 

[Blue cat]

Remember that a lot of people (particularly in law, business and government) preferred the keyboard (I know I did - and still do).

I think part of the problem is that they tried to compete with Apple and Samsung on personal phones. They just couldn’t really compete and ended up losing the business/government users. Maybe if they stay focused on making the best possible business phone, it might give them the edge. I agree more generally that it will be a tough battle against the bigger players.

Yep... In my view the original BB platform was a superb solution for corporate email access, messaging, calendar access and maybe a few other niche roles..
In my experience when BB added cellular phone functionality to the platform that also worked quite well.

Larer for general purpose personal web browsing and other non work functions I liked my hand held Apple products

Today I only use Apple handheld devices

 

[Devvy]

Blackberry was excellent in the corporate market for users, although the implementation of such was a bit of a hassle for the IT bods. My guess would be firstly adopt touchscreen technology and ditch the physical keyboard earlier, and secondly to adopt Android as the underlying operating system earlier for broad application compatibility, but for RIM to heavily customise and build on top of it to make it more suitable for the enterprise market that RIM used to make good money from, creating as "RIM-Android" flavour if you will as opposed to "Google-Android". Google is only now really making significant progress in enterprise functionality and addressing corporate concerns over the viability of open source software (whether you agree or not, enterprises and security people have generally been less then favourable to open source software); provisioning and management have been of varying levels for a while, and the OS/OEM split makes long term support more difficult.

A unified RIM-Android offering would allow long term support for devices (for patching and functionality), guaranteed fixing of security flaws, wider application compatibility with a "RIM Store" which developers can upload apps in to (and for which apps would broadly be cross-compatible with Google-Android, whilst also providing a better enterprise targeted version of an app store), and retain the business functionality RIM was well known for, all without having to maintain their own OS at heart.

Whilst RIM did this in later years, my view is that it was too late, and it was only a half-arsed implementation of Android and what it could be. Enterprises needed better functionality, management and security built in to the device, and will pay for it.

I also agree Blackberry tried to play with the big boys in the consumer marketplace and got burnt; they need to recognise what they are good at and build on that rather then the consumer space which is tiny profits on huge numbers of devices.