RIM death watch

[Crono]

I wish Blackberry would partner with Canonical, would love to see an Ubuntu phone with Blackberry hardware keyboard. Not that I need a physical keyboard, but it would be a useful addition for a true Linux distribution on a smartphone.

 

[Greenman]

So it's been three years and a bit since the death watch started, is there a time limit on these things?

 

[Ichinisan]

So it's been three years and a bit since the death watch started, is there a time limit on these things?

No. They're pretty "dead" as far as most folks are concerned. Blackberry stopped trying after their last hope didn't seem to catch on.

 

[pete6032]

New BB devices, including Blackberry Passport.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/19/5825078/the-passport-is-blackberrys-strangest-phone-ever

 

[JJChicken]

When will this thread die

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

I wish Blackberry would partner with Canonical, would love to see an Ubuntu phone with Blackberry hardware keyboard. Not that I need a physical keyboard, but it would be a useful addition for a true Linux distribution on a smartphone.

QNX is Posix compliant. There is a rumor that Linux app support might be coming. I first heard this a week ago so don't hold your breath. I do software(used to do embedded systems but with VxWorks) for a living but will state that I have no idea what it would take to get Linux apps working on a BB10 phone. I have no idea what the hurdles would be.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

No. They're pretty "dead" as far as most folks are concerned. Blackberry stopped trying after their last hope didn't seem to catch on.

So long as "most folks" are defined as those that only know and care about smart phones.

But in terms of "stopped trying" .... the last conference call that was on Thursday was interesting. Actually it might have been the shareholder meeting an hour after that. Chen is being very transparent to investors. They need to sell about 10 million phones a year to make a profit on that segment of the business. Ya, they are not number 1 or 2. But even as #4, they'll still be making phones.

The company itself is alive and kicking. Chen is truly completing the turnaround.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the LG G3 has a pixel density of 538 PPI whereas the Passport is at 452 PPI.

Yup, I guess Chen was wrong.

 

[Imp]

No. They're pretty "dead" as far as most folks are concerned. Blackberry stopped trying after their last hope didn't seem to catch on.

Pretty much this. They'll probably survive as a smaller entity, but I don't see them being a major player again.

 

[lothar]

Why do AnandTech forum members hate BlackBerry so much?

They are the sheeple of Apple, brained washed or paid agents to diss.

It's hip and cool to hate it, even if you haven't used it. Kinda like Nintendo now, people seem to hate it because it doesn't have CoD or "popular shooter"

Because there are certain facts about these people that all, in sum, lead to this behavior:

1. They have no clue about business administration or Marketing
2. They assume the iPhone and Galaxy devices are the one and only formfactor and the only way how smartphones work
3. They see the smartphone market as a single market segment with a single target audience: themselves.
4. They see the smartphone market as a kind of race with companies as sports teams, whose contenders can be of exactly three different kinds:
4.1 The winner - Apple currently. Everything this guy does is the way to go and awesome
4.2 The serious contender - Samsung currently
4.3 The rest - everyone else is 'failing' and 'doomed'.
5. They assume there's only one right way to survive for BlackBerry: doing the exact same thing as Apple and Samsung, but better
6. They assume every device BlackBerry releases is a supposed 'homerun', a 'turn around', a super hit to go after Apple and Samsung users
.
.
.
.
They just narrow minded and stupid. That's all.

I'll tell you exactly why -- that's a hardcore nerd site with a bunch of HATERS who couldn't get laid if their lives depended on it.

If I remember correctly, Apple pays many news sites for reporting on their products. If BlackBerry could pay them to report good articles about their phones then you'll see a different mind set on the news.

It's a number of things. It's American centric, generally consumer oriented site. BlackBerry has never appealed to tech enthusiasts because traditionally their specs have lagged hard and BlackBerry features don't appeal to this group who generally want shiny new toys with all the latest bells and whistles.

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackb...forum-members-hate-blackberry-so-much-940826/

 

[AznAnarchy99]

It will be nice if the Passport single handedly turns BlackBerry around and proves their smug asses wrong.

Haha

 

[OBLAMA2009]

blackberry just needs to die, like, yesterday...

 

[Bateluer]

Why do AnandTech forum members hate BlackBerry so much?

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackb...forum-members-hate-blackberry-so-much-940826/

Wow . . .

I don't hate Blackberry, I'd just saddened by their near complete incompetence. They sat on their haunches and laughed while Apple and Google just gulped up nearly all their market share. By the time they actually seemed to get serious, they were out of the game entirely. At this point, its just a clock waiting for their cash reserves to run out. They aren't moving phones, they aren't selling services, and businesses are moving away from them en mass. Consumers already did.

 

[akugami]

Wow . . .

I don't hate Blackberry, I'd just saddened by their near complete incompetence. They sat on their haunches and laughed while Apple and Google just gulped up nearly all their market share. By the time they actually seemed to get serious, they were out of the game entirely. At this point, its just a clock waiting for their cash reserves to run out. They aren't moving phones, they aren't selling services, and businesses are moving away from them en mass. Consumers already did.

Know what is sad? You could replace Blackberry with Nokia or Microsoft...

How the hell does 3 corporations employing many supposedly bright minds, screw it up so badly?

 

[rockyct]

Know what is sad? You could replace Blackberry with Nokia or Microsoft...

How the hell does 3 corporations employing many supposedly bright minds, screw it up so badly?

Nokia I can see as they made great hardware but never adapted to the smartphone market until they were bailed out by Microsoft a couple year ago and then officially gave in last year.

Microsoft I see a bit differently. They are often the first/early to market with an idea, but they never actually flesh out the idea into a very good product. They were the first with a tablet over ten years ago but only with Windows 8 did they make it a good product. (You may hate Win8 on the desktop, but it's actually very good OS on a tablet. The main issue is the lackluster app store which was because it was two years late). They moved pretty quickly initially with smartphones but refused to overhaul the OS until they were way behind. Windows 8 itself again jumped the gun a bit. They made a mobile first OS to try to jump ahead and anticipate the new mobile landscape. What actually happened was that people bought the newest tablet but still kept their desktop/laptop and didn't want a mobile OS on it. Tablet growth slowed and it's expected that the desktop/laptop market will actually level out by next year. In general, I think Microsoft had a lot of bloated management and the new CEO is attempting to right some of that with the rumored impeding layoffs and last year's reorg. They have the massive revenue stream and cash to flounder for a bit (unlike Nokia or BBM). At least they are moving quickly now and reacting to criticism. You can see how different the Xbox they announced at E3 last year is to the Xbox it currently is one year later. It may very well be too late, but they seem to be awake right now.

 

[WelshBloke]

Why do AnandTech forum members hate BlackBerry so much?

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackb...forum-members-hate-blackberry-so-much-940826/

Blackberry fanboys are like WindowsPhone fanboys on steroids.

They are both utterly blind to the failings in their chosen platforms and are convinced that the only reason that the usage figures for their platforms are low is because of shenanigans by the rest of the industry.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I don't hate Blackberry, I'd just saddened by their near complete incompetence. They sat on their haunches and laughed while Apple and Google just gulped up nearly all their market share. By the time they actually seemed to get serious, they were out of the game entirely.

Exactly. Blackberry is a lesson for all what happens when you get too arrogant about your position on the market. The SECOND the Storm flopped RIM should have redone their OS from scratch. But they screwed around with the Playbook and wasted their chance.

Heck they even had a second chance after the Playbook. If after that disaster they would have faced facts and become an Android OEM, then they could have been THE business smartphone. But instead they came up with their own OS that no one wanted at that point, with some of the best parts of Android kinda bolted on.

One of the RIM fanboys compared them to Nintendo and I think that is a good fit. Both got arrogant about their marketshare, and for that both had bigger companies come and take that marketshare away from them.

 

[smitbret]

Blackberry fanboys are like WindowsPhone fanboys on steroids.

They are both utterly blind to the failings in their chosen platforms and are convinced that the only reason that the usage figures for their platforms are low is because of shenanigans by the rest of the industry.

I'm a Blackberry guy and frequent Crackberry. I don't think I've ever seen or read anyone blaming "industry shenanigans". I think pretty much everyone is unanimous that Blackberry wrote their own ticket to disaster by failing to acknowledge how the market changed and by getting lazy.

I'm sure if you dig deep enough, you'll find some idiot that posted some quote, but in general, Blackberry enthusiasts have come to terms with the fact that Waterloo's Waterloo was of their own making and for a few years they couldn't stop stepping on their own feet.

 

[Mermaidman]

BBRY has been on a tear recently, but big dip today due to the Apple-IBM collaboration that was just announced.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

BBRY has been on a tear recently, but big dip today due to the Apple-IBM collaboration that was just announced.

Makes sense. Blackberry's only way to stay in the game was the fact that nobody really made an actual industry focused push. Samsung sort of tried it with KNOX but it was half assed.

IBM + Apple is a dream team of uniformity and already a current strong industry presense.

I can't believe modern IBM is beating Blackberry in terms of quickness to move into a industry.

 

[Imp]

Why do AnandTech forum members hate BlackBerry so much?

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackb...forum-members-hate-blackberry-so-much-940826/

lolololol... I didn't think we were so important.

P.S. I own one iPod Shuffle. My only Apple product.

 

[rockyct]

Blackberry fanboys are like WindowsPhone fanboys on steroids.

They are both utterly blind to the failings in their chosen platforms and are convinced that the only reason that the usage figures for their platforms are low is because of shenanigans by the rest of the industry.

I think the only time you really hear the Windows Phone people complain about "industry shenanigans" is from the store reps insulting Windows Phone but that's mostly from reps just wanting to sell a phone and some accessories and the easiest way to do that is to push the iPhone. They have a pile of addons to push and the iPhone probably has a very low return rate. The reps aren't paid to get you the best phone for your needs. They just don't want phones being returned because they don't have Snapchat.

I love my Windows Phone but the blame is on Microsoft for responding too late to the iPhone. They were about a year too late and didn't update the platform enough those first two years. I think Windows Phone 8.1 is finally on par with the iOS and Android, but market momentum is huge and it's towards Android right now. If Windows Phone was late to the party (2010 release), Blackberry has basically missed it.

lolololol... I didn't think we were so important.

P.S. I own one iPod Shuffle. My only Apple product.

It would be hilarious if this thread ended up getting ranked pretty high in search results but it's probably just a guy who got hurt from the flat out mocking of BBM here.

 

[Imp]

So, um, BBRY stock is down 12% today after Apple-IBM announcement. I sweat, if there wasn't a chance this could go to zero at any time, it'd be such an amazing play: swings of 50-100% within weeks.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Wow . . .

I don't hate Blackberry, I'd just saddened by their near complete incompetence. They sat on their haunches and laughed while Apple and Google just gulped up nearly all their market share. By the time they actually seemed to get serious, they were out of the game entirely. At this point, its just a clock waiting for their cash reserves to run out. They aren't moving phones, they aren't selling services, and businesses are moving away from them en mass. Consumers already did.

Where do you get this information? Because most of it is false and shows someone that is misinformed. So, please show me a source of information. I am especially excited to see your model that shows the cash level dropping to zero.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

I'm a Blackberry guy and frequent Crackberry. I don't think I've ever seen or read anyone blaming "industry shenanigans". I think pretty much everyone is unanimous that Blackberry wrote their own ticket to disaster by failing to acknowledge how the market changed and by getting lazy.

I'm sure if you dig deep enough, you'll find some idiot that posted some quote, but in general, Blackberry enthusiasts have come to terms with the fact that Waterloo's Waterloo was of their own making and for a few years they couldn't stop stepping on their own feet.

Out of blackberry's own mouth years ago when they commented on where it all went wrong. It started with the iPhone. They didn't think people would buy a phone where the battery barely lasted half of a day. They thought it would flop because of this. That was the root cause of failure so to speak.

Of course, they didn't even plan on a next gen OS similar to iOS that could do what iOS did until it was too late. They should have realized that hardware would catch up and provide better battery life eventually. But they didn't think forwardly enough.

Tech changes fast and their assumptions were wrong. I would not call it lazy. It demonstrated a lack of understanding of where computer hardware was going in the short to mid term (1-5 years).

What is interesting is Chen .... he is looking at 5 years from now. It is an entirely different plan and it is extremely forward looking like it should be. it has nothing to do with catering to consumers and everything to do with secure hardware integration at the enterprise level.

What is interesting and what all the blackberry haters are clueless about is what is happening now at blackberry. When 5 years from now, you go to the hospital and find out that all the hardware is wirelessly integrated in a secure manner using a worldwide secure infrastructure that has been around for many years ... and see a logo on the machines .... that's when the haters will finally get it. Chen is taking BBRY in a very interesting direction.

I should just delete this ... grenade thrown ... door closed ... clicking post ... not opening thread to read responses for atleast a week because I already know what I am going to read (words from an uneducated public).