Not with the cards they have in play. They need the equivalent of a game changer. A "me too look I can do touchscreens and apps" strategy isn't enough.
I was actually talking in general. I do however think that there was a window in time in which BB could've been a contender in the 'touchscreen and apps' game, and botched it with dreadful hardware.
C'mon, this whole article was design to allow the author to bring the words RIM and Jobs next to each other. See last paragraph... Lol.
Back from the gutter, QNX may be cool but it is a small software company and offers no chance at supporting a relatively capital intensive smartphone business. QNX is to all its licensees as ARM is to smartphones. Small, cool but everyone else makes the big bucks.
BB cannot compete in smartphones. Apple and Samsung have destroyed handset economics by throwing billions at each launch (though very different spending patterns). Google and MS have destroyed OS economics by giving them away. Good, MS, etc. have destroyed MDM economics for BB who are already heavily discounting their once powerful service revenues. Niche markets are not enough to keep BB afloat as iPhones and Galaxies eat up the remaining advantages that BB had but cannot actively defend.
PS Apologies to Dreyfus2 who already said most of this further up. #readothercomments1st
I wonder if Blackberry will become a verb like blackberried or blackburied much like the term Osborne Effect came from Obsorne's poor decision.
There are so many choices for the branding of epic collapse... To get "Nokia'd Out", to get "Motorol'led Over" are two bigger and more dominant player allusions who have ceased to be.
BB are a classic example of a small player in a smaller pool which made them look mighty in the early smartphone days (like HTC) but they really never stood a chance at scaling to become a real player given the size and ruthlessness of the sharks that entered when the pool opened up to the ocean. A transformation started in 2007, the massive investment of every penny of FCF in the attempt to grow scale and relevance to be able to take the commercial fight to Apple and Samsung would have been their only chance to maintain independence as a handset maker in the market of 1Bn phones per year.
If the trial revelations between Apple and Samsung have shown us anything, it is that beneath the calm, cocky exteriors, even the $200Bn behemoths were showing an uncharacteristic level of panic about the long game vs. Each other, dropping 10s of $Bns on marketing and supply chain each year. How does a relative pipsqueak like BB survive when it ignores this seismic shift for 3 years.
If the trial revelations between Apple and Samsung have shown us anything, it is that beneath the calm, cocky exteriors, even the $200Bn behemoths were showing an uncharacteristic level of panic...
That's what I would expect from a good company. The ones that acted so cocky that Apple had no business making a phone are either now gone, nearly gone, or their handset division is just a shell of its former glory.
There is that old saying, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're out to get you." Yet in business they are out to get you so being paranoid is healthy.
QNX for phones and tablets is dead! However QNX as an embedded OS for automotive, instrumentation, etc. has a bright future and little competition:
I wonder if BB owns QNX lock stock and barrel. They may not have rights to the embedded market, such as for the automobile as someone else did a lot of work with the interface to the sensors and getting the electronics to function over a wide dynamic temperature range.
There are so many choices for the branding of epic collapse... To get "Nokia'd Out", to get "Motorol'led Over" are two bigger and more dominant player allusions who have ceased to be.
BB are a classic example of a small player in a smaller pool which made them look mighty in the early smartphone days (like HTC) but they really never stood a chance at scaling to become a real player given the size and ruthlessness of the sharks that entered when the pool opened up to the ocean. A transformation started in 2007, the massive investment of every penny of FCF in the attempt to grow scale and relevance to be able to take the commercial fight to Apple and Samsung would have been their only chance to maintain independence as a handset maker in the market of 1Bn phones per year.
Everyone from Palm and RIM to the Microsoft behemoth who had a good laugh when Apple entered the phone market with a cell phone without a keyboard in 2007 lost close to 4 years of market place as they chuckled and failed to adjust to the changing world of communications and access to information. Microsoft was the slowest to react, and even with all their resources and using Nokia to get to market, was the last to offer a product to counter Apple's dominance.
I'm sure it's cold comfort to Microsoft that after buying Nokia (a once world leader) that they barely rank ahead of BB in sales impact.
That's what I would expect from a good company. The ones that acted so cocky that Apple had no business making a phone are either now gone, nearly gone, or their handset division is just a shell of its former glory.
There is that old saying, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're out to get you." Yet in business they are out to get you so being paranoid is healthy.
Actually, it's this: "“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you”
A wonderful book, as fresh and funny today as when it was published 52 years ago. Absolutely packed with the wisdom of the absurd - underpinning the book throughout:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
BlackBerry's co-CEOS when the iPhone was introduced - Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis - belong in the pages of Catch-22. Here is a prime selection of their priceless observations:
Everyone from Palm and RIM to the Microsoft behemoth who had a good laugh when Apple entered the phone market with a cell phone without a keyboard in 2007 lost close to 4 years of market place as they chuckled and failed to adjust to the changing world of communications and access to information. Microsoft was the slowest to react, and even with all their resources and using Nokia to get to market, was the last to offer a product to counter Apple's dominance.
I'm sure it's cold comfort to Microsoft that after buying Nokia (a once world leader) that they barely rank ahead of BB in sales impact.
Would it really have mattered when they adjusted? Moto and HTC adjusted rather quickly and it has benefitted them very little. The consultation prize is surviving rather than dying. Apple has most certainly earned it's way, and sadly Samsung has cheated and bought it's way.
A cautionary tale. Complete reversals of fortune are possible in the phone business in a relatively short amount of time. I remember when RIM was the hot stock/company/phone that everyone was talking about.
Microsoft came back from the grave with their Windows phone. I'm sure Blackberry could do it too. Don't ask me how.
Blackberry is a world-famous brand. That has to be worth something.
A cautionary tale. Complete reversals of fortune are possible in the phone business in a relatively short amount of time. I remember when RIM was the hot stock/company/phone that everyone was talking about.
Microsoft came back from the grave with their Windows phone. I'm sure Blackberry could do it too. Don't ask me how.
Blackberry is a world-famous brand. That has to be worth something.
Reversals of fortunes can happen in any type of business. It usually starts with the hiring of a non bonehead CEO.
A cautionary tale. Complete reversals of fortune are possible in the phone business in a relatively short amount of time. I remember when RIM was the hot stock/company/phone that everyone was talking about.
Microsoft came back from the grave with their Windows phone. I'm sure Blackberry could do it too. Don't ask me how.
Blackberry is a world-famous brand. That has to be worth something.
More likely it will be a new entrant that totally disrupts an existing industry or industries. Apple is notable for having disrupted quite a few; personal music players, personal computing, music and visual content distribution, phones, etc. Two decades from now, it's almost certain that the leaders we know today - Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. - will be fundamentally challenged and perhaps disrupted entirely by advances that we can't even perceive at this time.
More likely it will be a new entrant that totally disrupts an existing industry or industries. Apple is notable for having disrupted quite a few; personal music players, personal computing, music and visual content distribution, phones, etc. Two decades from now, it's almost certain that the leaders we know today - Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. - will be fundamentally challenged and perhaps disrupted entirely by advances that we can't even perceive at this time.
Realising the next technology curve is key.
Like the classic Ice manufacturing industry.
It started out with a bunch of people harvesting ice blocks from the Antarctic and bring it to the rest of the world.
The next curve was making an Ice factory that made Ice and sold it to the people.
The next curve was making a refrigerator for the home.
Was it worth building technology for even the next curve like having super powers like the lady in frozen to create Ice from thin air ??
All of these technology shifts will render there predecessor tech obsolete. Every one out there is looking out for computations next curve. The search goes on.
<<< Pardon the snip of a great post... wanted to concentrate on this though >>>
BlackBerry's co-CEOS when the iPhone was introduced - Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis - belong in the pages of Catch-22. Here is a prime selection of their priceless observations:
Jim Balsillie's first reaction to the iPhone on an earnings call was incomprehensible
This gem comes from hedge fund manager Eric Jackson on Forbes. Good luck figuring out what Balsillie's talking about here:
Yeah on the iPhone touch, I mean I don’t know, we do a lot of focused groups in what we do, there’s a lot of market research in what we do, we had a lot of market research from our customers in the markets on what the market expects from a solution. However, there has been some debate previous on graffiti and different touch and tactility things and [mechanical] vulnerability costs and battery kind of things and tactility things. I think the best thing will be that for these things to just get in to market and get going, and its just there’s just so many dimensions in our space happen sometimes people over define the category like its all about for so at last its all about the keyboard or its all about some input mechanism or its all about music play or something.
And I think it’s a bit of multi-dimensional, it is a lot of multi-dimensional conversion space that we play in and it tends to be iterative and evolutionary. My experience is one person may be make a baby in nine months, nine people can’t make a baby in one month. But who knows may be some natural constructs can be shifted and we’ll have to revive those views and they can shorten these realities. But I think the best thing, the good thing is this, there is a lot of attention to this space, its growing the space, its validating extensions to the space. On a leadership positions, we see the growth current — and really keep it up and meant some go in the future. And that’s really what I focus on. I am not really want to play a gamesmanship, my input mechanisms funkier than your input mechanism.
We’re really focused on compelling user experience the highly aligned relationships with the carriers and a tremendous amount of channel support and service support and care, and application extension, because our experience is there is a lot of heavy lifting there. And beyond that I can’t say as I really pay that much attention to all these little dynamics because it doesn’t help me, help my customers and help and channels more and so let it be what it will be.
In terms of pricing of (inaudible) Curve sometimes they do special promos for new products, sometime they are slightly lower cost structure for us to make them. A lot of good carriers special programs and positioning, they excited and see an opportunity and sometime cause things for us and you also can see it kind of service plan they bundle to it and that kind of ads they allow to it. So, and different piece of hardware priced differently in different markets for us so, but the 8800 is a little more expensive in the Curve but its delightful to see the carriers pricing the Curve so aggressively because, my experience is when they do this it should actually takes two or three months for the momentum to really sort of kick in the gear.
So if you start doing stuff like that in May, you generally start to really, the channel as we get bigger are kind of slow train are coming but comes sort of midish August, they really start gathering speed and then you can ride that through the back to school and the sort of Christmas kind of phase so, that’s we are pleased to see it and I don’t know if the 8800 that’ll shift that way maybe, maybe not, there’s just so many different programs and so many strategies. Its hard for me to sort of generalize it all.
That's what I would expect from a good company. The ones that acted so cocky that Apple had no business making a phone are either now gone, nearly gone, or their handset division is just a shell of its former glory.
There is that old saying, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're out to get you." Yet in business they are out to get you so being paranoid is healthy.
I wonder if BB owns QNX lock stock and barrel. They may not have rights to the embedded market, such as for the automobile as someone else did a lot of work with the interface to the sensors and getting the electronics to function over a wide dynamic temperature range.
And if BB go under, will Apple buy QNX from them? Probably not, but wondering.
Comments
I was actually talking in general. I do however think that there was a window in time in which BB could've been a contender in the 'touchscreen and apps' game, and botched it with dreadful hardware.
Back from the gutter, QNX may be cool but it is a small software company and offers no chance at supporting a relatively capital intensive smartphone business. QNX is to all its licensees as ARM is to smartphones. Small, cool but everyone else makes the big bucks.
BB cannot compete in smartphones. Apple and Samsung have destroyed handset economics by throwing billions at each launch (though very different spending patterns). Google and MS have destroyed OS economics by giving them away. Good, MS, etc. have destroyed MDM economics for BB who are already heavily discounting their once powerful service revenues.
Niche markets are not enough to keep BB afloat as iPhones and Galaxies eat up the remaining advantages that BB had but cannot actively defend.
PS Apologies to Dreyfus2 who already said most of this further up. #readothercomments1st
There are so many choices for the branding of epic collapse... To get "Nokia'd Out", to get "Motorol'led Over" are two bigger and more dominant player allusions who have ceased to be.
BB are a classic example of a small player in a smaller pool which made them look mighty in the early smartphone days (like HTC) but they really never stood a chance at scaling to become a real player given the size and ruthlessness of the sharks that entered when the pool opened up to the ocean. A transformation started in 2007, the massive investment of every penny of FCF in the attempt to grow scale and relevance to be able to take the commercial fight to Apple and Samsung would have been their only chance to maintain independence as a handset maker in the market of 1Bn phones per year.
If the trial revelations between Apple and Samsung have shown us anything, it is that beneath the calm, cocky exteriors, even the $200Bn behemoths were showing an uncharacteristic level of panic about the long game vs. Each other, dropping 10s of $Bns on marketing and supply chain each year. How does a relative pipsqueak like BB survive when it ignores this seismic shift for 3 years.
That's what I would expect from a good company. The ones that acted so cocky that Apple had no business making a phone are either now gone, nearly gone, or their handset division is just a shell of its former glory.
There is that old saying, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're out to get you." Yet in business they are out to get you so being paranoid is healthy.
I wonder if BB owns QNX lock stock and barrel. They may not have rights to the embedded market, such as for the automobile as someone else did a lot of work with the interface to the sensors and getting the electronics to function over a wide dynamic temperature range.
Everyone from Palm and RIM to the Microsoft behemoth who had a good laugh when Apple entered the phone market with a cell phone without a keyboard in 2007 lost close to 4 years of market place as they chuckled and failed to adjust to the changing world of communications and access to information. Microsoft was the slowest to react, and even with all their resources and using Nokia to get to market, was the last to offer a product to counter Apple's dominance.
I'm sure it's cold comfort to Microsoft that after buying Nokia (a once world leader) that they barely rank ahead of BB in sales impact.
That's what I would expect from a good company. The ones that acted so cocky that Apple had no business making a phone are either now gone, nearly gone, or their handset division is just a shell of its former glory.
There is that old saying, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're out to get you." Yet in business they are out to get you so being paranoid is healthy.
Actually, it's this: "“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you”
? Joseph Heller, Catch-22
A wonderful book, as fresh and funny today as when it was published 52 years ago. Absolutely packed with the wisdom of the absurd - underpinning the book throughout:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
'That's some catch, that Catch-22,' he observed.
'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed.”
? Joseph Heller, Catch-22
BlackBerry's co-CEOS when the iPhone was introduced - Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis - belong in the pages of Catch-22. Here is a prime selection of their priceless observations:
http://www.businessinsider.com/rim-ceo-quotes-2011-9?op=1
Would it really have mattered when they adjusted? Moto and HTC adjusted rather quickly and it has benefitted them very little. The consultation prize is surviving rather than dying. Apple has most certainly earned it's way, and sadly Samsung has cheated and bought it's way.
A cautionary tale. Complete reversals of fortune are possible in the phone business in a relatively short amount of time. I remember when RIM was the hot stock/company/phone that everyone was talking about.
Microsoft came back from the grave with their Windows phone. I'm sure Blackberry could do it too. Don't ask me how.
Blackberry is a world-famous brand. That has to be worth something.
Reversals of fortunes can happen in any type of business. It usually starts with the hiring of a non bonehead CEO.
A cautionary tale. Complete reversals of fortune are possible in the phone business in a relatively short amount of time. I remember when RIM was the hot stock/company/phone that everyone was talking about.
Microsoft came back from the grave with their Windows phone. I'm sure Blackberry could do it too. Don't ask me how.
Blackberry is a world-famous brand. That has to be worth something.
More likely it will be a new entrant that totally disrupts an existing industry or industries. Apple is notable for having disrupted quite a few; personal music players, personal computing, music and visual content distribution, phones, etc. Two decades from now, it's almost certain that the leaders we know today - Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. - will be fundamentally challenged and perhaps disrupted entirely by advances that we can't even perceive at this time.
Realising the next technology curve is key.
Like the classic Ice manufacturing industry.
It started out with a bunch of people harvesting ice blocks from the Antarctic and bring it to the rest of the world.
The next curve was making an Ice factory that made Ice and sold it to the people.
The next curve was making a refrigerator for the home.
Was it worth building technology for even the next curve like having super powers like the lady in frozen to create Ice from thin air ??
All of these technology shifts will render there predecessor tech obsolete. Every one out there is looking out for computations next curve. The search goes on.
Remember “Genesis does what Nintendon’t”?
It certainly seems that “Droid does” has gone the way of Sega.
His statement would have had more impact had he not been checking the clock on the wall while he made it...
...with his hands behind his back so you can't see that his fingers were crossed...
From the link, this quote stands out:
This is what happens when you try to take shortcuts to success.
1) read book on Steve Jobs;
2) note to self, "must take acid soon" ;
3) become addicted and do tabs like pop-tarts for breakfast before an important earnings call interview;
4) not only flummox your investors, but your own employees as to what they are doing and trying to accomplish;
5) no doubt sees a crazy hippy-looking dude in a pink t-shirt dropping him into a grave while cursing like a drunk sailor... but sees bliss in that.
Moral of the story:
Don't do drugs when you're already a CEO of a major tech company. Time and place for everything... :smokey:
That's what I would expect from a good company. The ones that acted so cocky that Apple had no business making a phone are either now gone, nearly gone, or their handset division is just a shell of its former glory.
There is that old saying, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're out to get you." Yet in business they are out to get you so being paranoid is healthy.
And so it is in life, too.
I wonder if BB owns QNX lock stock and barrel. They may not have rights to the embedded market, such as for the automobile as someone else did a lot of work with the interface to the sensors and getting the electronics to function over a wide dynamic temperature range.
And if BB go under, will Apple buy QNX from them? Probably not, but wondering.