Exactly what people said about Apple in 1998, look where they are now. Weird that Apple, Google and Microsoft had such high interest in buying QNX and Blackberry's patent portfolio.
I was on the Crackberry forum a while ago, and I saw a few posts there comparing Blackberry to Apple, and how Apple was in trouble before and they came back, and how that could happen to Blackberry also. Those delusional people can sure dream if they like, but it's not going to happen.
The difference is that Blackberry has no Steve Jobs, and nobody is going to save them. Blackberry is not a pioneering computer company like Apple was.
And it's not weird that some companies have an interest in their patent portfolio, I don't doubt that they have a few patents that are worth owning.
Blackberry has been terribly managed by clueless morons. I remember the recent CEO saying how tablets were just a fad. Totally clueless, and I'm not surprised that things have gone terrible for Blackberry.
Actually it is big news because lots of people use what ever phone their employer provides them. If now they have an iPhone, that is another iPhone seen in the wild at an employee's home, business meeting, shopping etc. It is also provides Apple nice marketing, and perhaps more sales of other products such as Macs and iPods.
err. your definition of 'lots' is 'of the people i notice'
This is the classic AppleInsider myopia... "The universe of Apple is what I can see or perceive."
In the Apple world.... employer PROVIDED phones is not lots. Not at Apple Scale. They realized that when they stopped fighting the Corporate PC wars. There are 100's of 'consumers' to every 'corporate -supplied X' in the world. 99% of their sales is driven by the individual. In non 1st world countries, that number will scale to 1000:1.
We are talking 1BILLION mobile (smart, dumb, feature) phones, take or give out there. This number is fairly constant. No corporation has more than 50,000 phones under management under corporate purchase, save for the government and the telcos. I work for a company of 200K, and they only purchase cell phones for the Levels 1-4 (CEO down to Area VPs now) and sales (3000), for a total of 5000 BBY phones (and my boss and his boss and my sales reps all have BBYs for 'work' and 'other phones' for 'real world use'). I have an iPhone and I'm connected to their Lotus Notes network... calendaring, sametime, and mail.
The thought that corporate purchasing steers consumer purchasing is just wrong... wrong.
While 25,000 phones isn't important by itself, it's indicative of the way things are going. Blackberry sold over 20 million phones a year a year ago. If Apple gets two thirds of that business, that's important.
13 million phones. Apple will sell that next month. amortized over a year, that's 1million a month. The equities market already has tripled that in their expected growth estimates.
Apple scale is 'real money' now... "not a million here... a million there" (apologies to Senator Everett Dirksen?)
This is one thing I agree with the analysts... Selling to a rich person in corporate america isn't a big deal.
Selling to the 22year old college student in Beijing or Mumbai is a big deal. (The difference being is that I think Apple has to make the 'value' of the iPhone remain above the current 'cost' to attract more fund-limited buyers, vs starting a margin war for market share).
as for importance.... my guess is that "MOST" of those iphones are already sold sitting in the next pocket, waiting for the corporation to drop the BBM requirement or support BBM on the iPhone.
err. your definition of 'lots' is 'of the people i notice'
This is the classic AppleInsider myopia... "The universe of Apple is what I can see or perceive."
In the Apple world.... employer PROVIDED phones is not lots. Not at Apple Scale. They realized that when they stopped fighting the Corporate PC wars. There are 100's of 'consumers' to every 'corporate -supplied X' in the world. 99% of their sales is driven by the individual. In non 1st world countries, that number will scale to 1000:1.
We are talking 1BILLION mobile (smart, dumb, feature) phones, take or give out there. This number is fairly constant. No corporation has more than 50,000 phones under management under corporate purchase, save for the government and the telcos. I work for a company of 200K, and they only purchase cell phones for the Levels 1-4 (CEO down to Area VPs now) and sales (3000), for a total of 5000 BBY phones (and my boss and his boss and my sales reps all have BBYs for 'work' and 'other phones' for 'real world use'). I have an iPhone and I'm connected to their Lotus Notes network... calendaring, sametime, and mail.
The thought that corporate purchasing steers consumer purchasing is just wrong... wrong.
How can you say this ? Aren't employees also regular consumers in their personal lives? While I agree with you that the corporate and consumer markets are two different markets,and Pfizer employees probably won't influence anybody that doesn't work for Pfizer, there's no denying that apple products have a halo effect. How many employees that are provided with an iPhone or iPad for work will make their next personal purchase a MacBook or an iMac? How many will make their next mobile device an apple device?
The corporate world may not "steer" the consumer market in the way that you're explaining, but one Apple product in the hand of an employee is also one Apple product in the hand of an employee who is also a consumer. I'm pretty positive that Apple isn't sticking their noses up in the air at a purchase of 25,000 in enterprise just because they can do millions in consumer. Last time I checked the only way to get to a million is by ones.
President Obama (an otherwise progressive individual) and the Secret Service may be the last people on Earth using this device that's in its death throes. What's up with that?
As he noted during his news conference yesterday on health care:
... "And you combine that with the fact that the federal government does a lot of things really well. One of the things it does not do well is information technology procurement. You know, this is kind of a systematic problem that we have across the board."
I was on the Crackberry forum a while ago, and I saw a few posts there comparing Blackberry to Apple, and how Apple was in trouble before and they came back, and how that could happen to Blackberry also. Those delusional people can sure dream if they like, but it's not going to happen.
The difference is that Blackberry has no Steve Jobs, and nobody is going to save them. Blackberry is not a pioneering computer company like Apple was.
And it's not weird that some companies have an interest in their patent portfolio, I don't doubt that they have a few patents that are worth owning.
Blackberry has been terribly managed by clueless morons. I remember the recent CEO saying how tablets were just a fad. Totally clueless, and I'm not surprised that things have gone terrible for Blackberry.
Totally agree. The fact that Apple's comeback hinges on the return on Steve Jobs is something that cannot be overlooked or under considered when you're comparing the two company's abilities to make a comeback. It's not like Apple just magically got their sh!t together. It's very safe to say that everything that Apple is now is because of Steve Jobs' vision and leadership.....Notice that I didn't say just because of Steve Jobs, because he's only one person. There are plenty of people at Apple who have played a role in where they are now, but a great leader is the one in charge of putting on those people in the right positions to make that possible.
Not to say that their aren't other great visionary leaders in the world because there are! But to blindly say that Blackberry can make a comeback only because Apple did isn't very thoughtful or insightful.
My company also is phasing out BB. Some ppl already got "5s" as replacements. I don't know the volume, but, it can easily be in hundreds. It may not be big. But, it bodes well for the fruit device maker ...
It looks like companies are leaving Blackberry all over. Ours dropped Blackberry this week . The reason given was the increase in the licence fee. This seems to be a major error by Blackberry. Putting up licence fees will not help to keep customers. Once they leave, what chance of customers coming back in the future?
Anybody still using a Blackberry in 2013 is like somebody who still uses a mechanical typewriter, and they have no clue that word processors and computers exists.
Blackberry is done. The writing on the wall was visible many years ago already. It's time for them to go away completely now.
I'm 43 and when I was young my Dad had an IBM-Select(something, tract?) II typewriter. It may have been $700 or something. Built like a tank, and awesome for what it was.
This week I went to my local town hall to remove a vehicle that I sold from the tax rolls, and saw one on a file cabinet in the corner. Some offices kept that last one around for that final form with the carbon copies that needed the Impact that a typewriter gave.
No longer. Just sitting there. Worth.....nothing.
It was a trip down memory lane to see it. The case was thick metal and so solid.
I think after the first security breach they will head on back to BlackBerry. I love my iPhone, but in a work environment android and iOS are not the ideal solution for a company that needs secure infrastructures.
What a load of crap. Blackberry lost its "more secure" claim years ago. Starting with the 3GS, iPhones got hardware level data encryption on the device. Starting with iOS 3, the mobile device management (MDM) API provided device management including remote wipe capabilities. All sync capabilities are SSL encryption enabled. And all of that has gotten significantly stronger in the years since, while BB has remained pretty much the same.
There's pretty much no enterprise environment that hasn't introduced iOS devices and validated that iOS and the devices are secure. Then there's government agencies and the military, too.
The only area in which Blackberry is more secure is in email and messaging, where they go through Blackberry's NOC. Otherwise, there's no real difference. The iPhones has achieved FIPS-2 level 2 security clearance. Blackberry is higher, but only because of that.
The real question that needs to be asked is what percentage of people in an organization really need such high security? My last company had 85 people in it, but only a small number knew enough about the business so that what they said would have been a problem.
How may people who have Blackberry's are secretaries, with little knowledge that they would have on their phones? How many in the mail room? I'd bet that the majority of all the 460,000 in the Pentagon with Blackberry's don't need them. And that's Blackberry's problem, not the fact that a much smaller number MAY need them.
Most organizations work this way:
Some of us need the security of a Blackberry, so for convenience! we'll put everybody on them.
But now they realize they don't have to do that.
In addition, it's been noted that business and government lose hundreds of thousands of laptops, many with serious information on it. It hasn't stopped them from using, and losing them.
Just as an added dimension, I would personally say that many organisations have blackberry populations due to historic reasons i.e. blackberries were the de facto standard for mobile email and calendar use with security in mind. The implementation required a reasonable investment in infrastructure & logistics to support it and so changing strategy requires further cost and potential write-offs.
But the perceived change in viability of RIM has changed the equation; plus the improved security offerings from other vendors. I work in Technology in an Investment Bank and similarly to Pfizer they have just announced a recall of blackberries with BYOD being the replacement approach (using GOOD Technology). They also specifically referred to the the future of RIM being uncertain.
I'm 43 and when I was young my Dad had an IBM-Select(something, tract?) II typewriter. It may have been $700 or something. Built like a tank, and awesome for what it was.
This week I went to my local town hall to remove a vehicle that I sold from the tax rolls, and saw one on a file cabinet in the corner. Some offices kept that last one around for that final form with the carbon copies that needed the Impact that a typewriter gave.
No longer. Just sitting there. Worth.....nothing.
It was a trip down memory lane to see it. The case was thick metal and so solid.
Suddenly.....this post has no point.
Have a good weekend all.
If I could get an IBM Selectric keyboard for my iMac that would be fantastic. That's a great typewriter.
Anybody still using a Blackberry in 2013 is like somebody who still uses a mechanical typewriter, and they have no clue that word processors and computers exists.
Blackberry is done. The writing on the wall was visible many years ago already. It's time for them to go away completely now.
Can Blackberry surprise the world the way Apple did in the late 90s ? I doubt that. Coz there is a fundamental variance in the way both companies worked. Apple pioneered the computing age. Blackberry hasn't done anything as big in its history. BB is going to go down history as a company that couldn't stand the age of Change pioneered by Apple.
Comments
Why yes they did. Apple's obituary was all but finalized.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Apple-layoffs-Painful-but-necessary-3130407.php
Exactly what people said about Apple in 1998, look where they are now. Weird that Apple, Google and Microsoft had such high interest in buying QNX and Blackberry's patent portfolio.
I was on the Crackberry forum a while ago, and I saw a few posts there comparing Blackberry to Apple, and how Apple was in trouble before and they came back, and how that could happen to Blackberry also. Those delusional people can sure dream if they like, but it's not going to happen.
The difference is that Blackberry has no Steve Jobs, and nobody is going to save them. Blackberry is not a pioneering computer company like Apple was.
And it's not weird that some companies have an interest in their patent portfolio, I don't doubt that they have a few patents that are worth owning.
Blackberry has been terribly managed by clueless morons. I remember the recent CEO saying how tablets were just a fad. Totally clueless, and I'm not surprised that things have gone terrible for Blackberry.
Shame BB don't have a former CEO to bring back that could save them.
Actually it is big news because lots of people use what ever phone their employer provides them. If now they have an iPhone, that is another iPhone seen in the wild at an employee's home, business meeting, shopping etc. It is also provides Apple nice marketing, and perhaps more sales of other products such as Macs and iPods.
err. your definition of 'lots' is 'of the people i notice'
This is the classic AppleInsider myopia... "The universe of Apple is what I can see or perceive."
In the Apple world.... employer PROVIDED phones is not lots. Not at Apple Scale. They realized that when they stopped fighting the Corporate PC wars. There are 100's of 'consumers' to every 'corporate -supplied X' in the world. 99% of their sales is driven by the individual. In non 1st world countries, that number will scale to 1000:1.
We are talking 1BILLION mobile (smart, dumb, feature) phones, take or give out there. This number is fairly constant. No corporation has more than 50,000 phones under management under corporate purchase, save for the government and the telcos. I work for a company of 200K, and they only purchase cell phones for the Levels 1-4 (CEO down to Area VPs now) and sales (3000), for a total of 5000 BBY phones (and my boss and his boss and my sales reps all have BBYs for 'work' and 'other phones' for 'real world use'). I have an iPhone and I'm connected to their Lotus Notes network... calendaring, sametime, and mail.
The thought that corporate purchasing steers consumer purchasing is just wrong... wrong.
While 25,000 phones isn't important by itself, it's indicative of the way things are going. Blackberry sold over 20 million phones a year a year ago. If Apple gets two thirds of that business, that's important.
13 million phones. Apple will sell that next month. amortized over a year, that's 1million a month. The equities market already has tripled that in their expected growth estimates.
Apple scale is 'real money' now... "not a million here... a million there" (apologies to Senator Everett Dirksen?)
This is one thing I agree with the analysts... Selling to a rich person in corporate america isn't a big deal.
Selling to the 22year old college student in Beijing or Mumbai is a big deal. (The difference being is that I think Apple has to make the 'value' of the iPhone remain above the current 'cost' to attract more fund-limited buyers, vs starting a margin war for market share).
as for importance.... my guess is that "MOST" of those iphones are already sold sitting in the next pocket, waiting for the corporation to drop the BBM requirement or support BBM on the iPhone.
How can you say this ? Aren't employees also regular consumers in their personal lives? While I agree with you that the corporate and consumer markets are two different markets,and Pfizer employees probably won't influence anybody that doesn't work for Pfizer, there's no denying that apple products have a halo effect. How many employees that are provided with an iPhone or iPad for work will make their next personal purchase a MacBook or an iMac? How many will make their next mobile device an apple device?
The corporate world may not "steer" the consumer market in the way that you're explaining, but one Apple product in the hand of an employee is also one Apple product in the hand of an employee who is also a consumer. I'm pretty positive that Apple isn't sticking their noses up in the air at a purchase of 25,000 in enterprise just because they can do millions in consumer. Last time I checked the only way to get to a million is by ones.
... "And you combine that with the fact that the federal government does a lot of things really well. One of the things it does not do well is information technology procurement. You know, this is kind of a systematic problem that we have across the board."
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2013/11/14/transcript-of-obamas-announcement-on-health-insurance/
I was on the Crackberry forum a while ago, and I saw a few posts there comparing Blackberry to Apple, and how Apple was in trouble before and they came back, and how that could happen to Blackberry also. Those delusional people can sure dream if they like, but it's not going to happen.
The difference is that Blackberry has no Steve Jobs, and nobody is going to save them. Blackberry is not a pioneering computer company like Apple was.
And it's not weird that some companies have an interest in their patent portfolio, I don't doubt that they have a few patents that are worth owning.
Blackberry has been terribly managed by clueless morons. I remember the recent CEO saying how tablets were just a fad. Totally clueless, and I'm not surprised that things have gone terrible for Blackberry.
Totally agree. The fact that Apple's comeback hinges on the return on Steve Jobs is something that cannot be overlooked or under considered when you're comparing the two company's abilities to make a comeback. It's not like Apple just magically got their sh!t together. It's very safe to say that everything that Apple is now is because of Steve Jobs' vision and leadership.....Notice that I didn't say just because of Steve Jobs, because he's only one person. There are plenty of people at Apple who have played a role in where they are now, but a great leader is the one in charge of putting on those people in the right positions to make that possible.
Not to say that their aren't other great visionary leaders in the world because there are! But to blindly say that Blackberry can make a comeback only because Apple did isn't very thoughtful or insightful.
My company also is phasing out BB. Some ppl already got "5s" as replacements. I don't know the volume, but, it can easily be in hundreds. It may not be big. But, it bodes well for the fruit device maker ...
Anybody still using a Blackberry in 2013 is like somebody who still uses a mechanical typewriter, and they have no clue that word processors and computers exists.
Blackberry is done. The writing on the wall was visible many years ago already. It's time for them to go away completely now.
I'm 43 and when I was young my Dad had an IBM-Select(something, tract?) II typewriter. It may have been $700 or something. Built like a tank, and awesome for what it was.
This week I went to my local town hall to remove a vehicle that I sold from the tax rolls, and saw one on a file cabinet in the corner. Some offices kept that last one around for that final form with the carbon copies that needed the Impact that a typewriter gave.
No longer. Just sitting there. Worth.....nothing.
It was a trip down memory lane to see it. The case was thick metal and so solid.
Suddenly.....this post has no point.
Have a good weekend all.
I think after the first security breach they will head on back to BlackBerry. I love my iPhone, but in a work environment android and iOS are not the ideal solution for a company that needs secure infrastructures.
What a load of crap. Blackberry lost its "more secure" claim years ago. Starting with the 3GS, iPhones got hardware level data encryption on the device. Starting with iOS 3, the mobile device management (MDM) API provided device management including remote wipe capabilities. All sync capabilities are SSL encryption enabled. And all of that has gotten significantly stronger in the years since, while BB has remained pretty much the same.
There's pretty much no enterprise environment that hasn't introduced iOS devices and validated that iOS and the devices are secure. Then there's government agencies and the military, too.
The only area in which Blackberry is more secure is in email and messaging, where they go through Blackberry's NOC. Otherwise, there's no real difference. The iPhones has achieved FIPS-2 level 2 security clearance. Blackberry is higher, but only because of that.
The real question that needs to be asked is what percentage of people in an organization really need such high security? My last company had 85 people in it, but only a small number knew enough about the business so that what they said would have been a problem.
How may people who have Blackberry's are secretaries, with little knowledge that they would have on their phones? How many in the mail room? I'd bet that the majority of all the 460,000 in the Pentagon with Blackberry's don't need them. And that's Blackberry's problem, not the fact that a much smaller number MAY need them.
Most organizations work this way:
Some of us need the security of a Blackberry, so for convenience! we'll put everybody on them.
But now they realize they don't have to do that.
In addition, it's been noted that business and government lose hundreds of thousands of laptops, many with serious information on it. It hasn't stopped them from using, and losing them.
Just as an added dimension, I would personally say that many organisations have blackberry populations due to historic reasons i.e. blackberries were the de facto standard for mobile email and calendar use with security in mind. The implementation required a reasonable investment in infrastructure & logistics to support it and so changing strategy requires further cost and potential write-offs.
But the perceived change in viability of RIM has changed the equation; plus the improved security offerings from other vendors. I work in Technology in an Investment Bank and similarly to Pfizer they have just announced a recall of blackberries with BYOD being the replacement approach (using GOOD Technology). They also specifically referred to the the future of RIM being uncertain.
If I could get an IBM Selectric keyboard for my iMac that would be fantastic. That's a great typewriter.
Can Blackberry surprise the world the way Apple did in the late 90s ? I doubt that. Coz there is a fundamental variance in the way both companies worked. Apple pioneered the computing age. Blackberry hasn't done anything as big in its history. BB is going to go down history as a company that couldn't stand the age of Change pioneered by Apple.
http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCABREA1L01Y20140222
Every corporation running back to Blackberry.