Home Depot abandoning BlackBerry platform in favor of Apple's iPhone and iOS - Page 2

This is good news for Apple, but not very significant compared to the number of Motorola devices they use on the sale floor running Windows CE.
Edited by taylorlightfoot - 2/10/13 at 6:06am

The problem with Lowe's is the software they are using sucks; the lady at the returns counter only had negative things to say about the iPhones when I asked her about them.  She said they constantly have to reboot them and they are buggy.

 

Home Depot is NOT trying to play catch up.  Home Depot, at least at the moment, will not be replacing all of the Motorola, formerly Symbol, devices that floor staff use on a daily basis.  These devices run Windows CE by the way, Target staff uses similar models for their operations.  

 

Home Depot management will not be using these iPhones to help do inventory or sales floor activities; it's a corporate phone and it will be used for E-Mail and calling.  Management will use their motorola devices for all other activities, assuming that management even does things like inventory, etc.

Thanks!

I thought that Lowes was originally using some modified iPods and began switching over to a specialized iPhone4 in 2011. Perhaps not according to this article. I thought it odd that they disabled the iPhone calling features as well as email and text capabilities tho. Why not use the iPod Touch if they weren't going to make use of the phone features? In any event it's clear Lowes found value in Apple's products and put them to good use.

 

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Lowes-to-give-42000-Apple-iPhone-4-handsets-to-employees_id21999

Edited by Gatorguy - 2/10/13 at 6:30am

Lowes uses what (I think) Apple Stores use these days:  a LineaPro 4 enclosure for the iPhone, that adds an extra battery, barcode scanner, and card swiper.

 

 

 

In the old days (i.e. the previous  couple of decades) a company like Lowes would've bought ruggedized all-in-one devices from suppliers like Symbol (which was acquired by Motorola) or Panasonic... and programmed it under Windows CE / .Net.  Heck, even Apple stores used Windows CE handhelds until fairly recently.

 

Now, with less Microsoft support, and growing management trust in off the shelf devices, the tide has turned in simpler situations towards using stock phones / tablets with custom enclosures.

Edited by KDarling - 2/10/13 at 7:08am

One thing we never seem to hear is some company switching from BB to Android. All the large companies I've seen in the news went to iOS.

 

In the enterprise application business, we see both iOS and Android usage.   A lot depends on what security and administration tools are available.  iOS is getting better in that regard.  

 

From the stats I've seen, currently enterprise-owned devices tend toward iOS, whereas BYOD tends toward Android.

 

That's not set in stone, of course.  For example, last year Verizon Wireless bought and deployed 4,000 Android tablets for its corporate salespeople. 

 

In my experience, if an enterprise had an investment in creating their own Blackberry Java apps, then they tend towards switching to Android, because they can more easily leverage their Java developers who are already familiar with the legacy apps.

Edited by KDarling - 2/10/13 at 10:10am

 

I really wish all these RIM employees would stop creating sock puppet accounts here.

 

 

Your value has tripled from "crap" to "old carpet stain".  "Uninformed", huh?

Skittish investors are relying in anti-Apple media reports. Losses of hundreds of billions? Last time I check Apple still had 70% of the cell phone profits.

This is the merely the tip of the iceberg for BlackBerry. This isn't going to be just a snowball effect but more of an avalanche as companies ditch the BB OS. Corporations don't want to invest money into a company that may be gone a year from now. It looks like another Palm in the making. BlackBerry needed to do a lot more than just change its name. At his rate, they might just as well have named the company DingleBerry.

I honestly don't want to see the company fail because of the workers losing their jobs. The problem is BlackBerry (RIM) was the only thing Canada had going for it. Without BlackBerry it would be just a frozen wasteland being inhabited by moose and elk. Anyway, RIM was a good company while it lasted but nothing lasts forever.

Oh you Americans are so funny...
I read this news today and traced back its origin to this forum.
As a non-American, I have to admit that I've never ever heard about a shop called "Home Depot" before. But how can anybody really believe that switching rougly 10000 devices from one non-US company to a US-company would have ANY stronger impact on the estimated 5-8 mil Blackberry sales in q1/2013?
10000 devices is peantus, and as I don't know "Home Depot" I suspect that the vast majority of US-americans doesn't know companys like Metro, which uses at least the same amount of BB handsets but is European?
Hello, wake up, there is a world out there and Blackberry is very widely used. I suspect the BB usage rather to grow than to decline due to security issues with other services - US-based cloud services like Office365 or Google docs do not fulfill European privacy rights, therefore it is illegal for European companies to use these services. And, are there really people in the US thinking that any Russian or Chinese companies would ever use US-based services??
Blackberry is at present the only alternative if companies are looking for secure services that are not under surveillance of US authorities, therefore Blackberry HAS a market.
It's quite ok and not unusual at all that some American hardware store decides to support the local business in favor to the Canadian, but that has no impact on the worldwide sales at all. Nor on the stock, that's ridiculous:)
Edited by kingofbeer - 2/12/13 at 5:03am

So where are they in usage stats?

Given they occasionally do, I would imagine so.

 

Well, US companies, at least. Thousands of US companies wouldn't trust Google, even.

 

It has an impact in that the US is in the world, therefore sales there affect total worldwide sales. It has an equivalent effect on the stock. Ridiculous is claiming otherwise.

 

Yes, of course, you're absolutely right. On the other hand,10000 devices, swapped over a long term, thats not a particular high number compared to the 4-8 million RIM usually sells per quarter.

I sometimes get really anoyed when news are translated from US-sites and make their way through the whole internet but in my language, leaving the impression they are not reflecting the American point of view.

I'm particularly pissed of Microsoft and the US point-of-view that led investors to the fatal decision to let Nokia drop its own OS in favor of the lousy Windows Phone, which again led to the destruction of Nokia.

I mean, Nokia was not common in the US, that's why the press was really negativ about Symbian and MeeGo. However, it WAS common in the rest of the world. Microsoft promised a high US market share if Nokia would switch to Windows. Now, we eventually have a poor Nokia market share throughout the world and Nokia sold all their european properties and factories plus released all their software developers (or at least most of them). Sorry, they should just have been happy with what they had, especially the almost 80% market share in China (a market which is even bigger than the US market) was a quite comfortable situation.

I'm in person using the last real Nokia - a Nokia N9, and I'm desperately waiting for the new Sailfish, Ubuntu and Tizen phones to be released. Not that I wouldn't like the US - actually I love beeing in the US. However, I do not agree with some strange US laws like the patriot act, and when it comes to business usage I really don't understand how a company could even consider storing sensible data on US servers. And that's why I think there is a space for Blackberry in the enterprise market, and there will also be a huge demand for phones that are not connect to either the iCloud, Google Cloud or Windows Cloud services.

 

The US generally has the highest proportion of everything. That includes developers. No one develops for the platform, it won't get adopted anywhere.

Well, we'll see. Given the fact there are already 70000+ apps available plus BBOS10 plays as well (repacked) Android apps AND Qt apps (as well supported by SailfishOS, Ubuntu mobile and Tizen) I hardly doubt you're right...

 

70,000… vs. 700,000. And a growing install base of 500,000,000 devices.

 

BlackBerry, at best, will have a niche. It won't be what it once was.

Have you seen the quality of the apps? A lot of them are ports and from what I've read they are poor ports. Their Java runtime for Android apps might actually be better than the ports. Are Android apps and Qt apps even available yet?

One of the big issues is that it appears to be missing staple apps. WIthout those, regardless of anything else, I do see how it can be considered a successful platform.

Afaik roughly 8000 apps are Android apps that were repacked, the rest are genuine Qt apps.
What is a staple app?
Whatsapp is available already/or at least announced, so are the most other common apps. I guess that BB well soon overtake WP in both, sales figures and app availability.
The new Z10 is only available in CA and UK yet, and with a brighter availability more apps will come for sure.
Of course, Blackberry will rather stay a working horse that will hardly achieve more than 10% market share , but a rather cool one! However, the Mac has a 6% market share on the desktop for years now and is still not dead, or is it?
Therefore, I wouldn't underestimate this company, they have a market, that's all I wanted to say:)

Hmmm "estimated" is the key word. What if BB ship/sell 3MM? In addition, Home Depot may be just one company but there are 10s or 100s of companies considering a change, if not more. Those small numbers add up.

Yes, true again. However, "considering" is also a keyword. Given the fact that the new BES also administers iPhones and Android devices it suits very well in a BYOD environment - and if companies start using BES they might also consider a mixed environment or maybe even try the new BB devices. I'm not convinced that Blackberry will survive, though. Buy I find they offer a great solution for the enterprise, and sales appear to be strong. And I still have the impression that there are quite many BBs around if you look what the business folks are using.
That recent BB sales were weak does not necessarily mean people actually switching - it could also reflect people were just waiting for the new system, especially as the introduction was somewhat delayed.
I'm really curious when the first official sales numbers will appear, but I have the strong feeling Blackberry could even beat Nokia instantly...
Edited by kingofbeer - 2/13/13 at 1:29am