A long time ago i said RIM is the new Nortel. I think I can continue to stand by that statement.
BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
31–40 of 157 posts
Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#32Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#33NO. Teary eyed. :( 3.7 million phone sales are nothing. Only if they had copied iOS the Samsung way in time.
Why? The problem isn't with the phones. The Z10 and Q10 are fantastic and BB10 is probably the best business-centric OS ever written. The problem is that the applications are just not there, and that people associate BlackBerry with reboots, battery pulls, and outdated, clunky software, even though that's not the case. It's an image problem, not a phone problem. They can't market like Apple used to. If they could, th…
"best business-centric OS" and there it is.
same idiocy as MS.
it's either user-centric or it isn't. BB catered to "business", but that meant IT. the users, managers, switched privately to iPhones. then demanded them from IT. boom, headshot.
BYOD is what kills "business-centric".
BB realized that, tried to position BBM as a user centric thing. too late. and schizo, as the playbook slogan "amateur hour is over" showed.
Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#34Was digging up some numbers. In 2010, BlackBerry still sold more phones than Apple. How the mighty have fallen.
What were the real problems then that led to their fall? Lack of technology innovation? badly run company and operations? lost touch with the consumer? All of the above?
I'd put it under both "lack of technology innovation" and "lost touch with the consumer".
Around 2007 with the release of the iPhone, the smartphone market shifted massively. Within a relatively short time, people wanted phones with (relatively speaking, for the time) gigantic screens, no hardware keyboards, fluid touch-based UIs, and abundant third-party apps. Apple delivered on this, and Google followed fairly closely behind.
BB was caught flat-footed and took years to catch up on the UI and form factor, by which time they were too late to catch up on the apps, which is probably what ultimately killed them. BB's success was in a time where the phone maker and the carrier were expected to provide nearly all of the useful functionality on a phone, whereas with iPhone and Android, while they're still expected to be useful out of the box, it's also expected that the user will heavily customize them with third-party apps.
Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#35I've been thinking about RIM lately and I think they basically had chances to turn themselves around, but took neither.
The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google, Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had it come out in 2011. With decent hardware, a solid OS, their own style and riding on BBM (big at that time), they might have staked a sustainable 10-15% chunk of the market.
The second chance was '10/'11, around the time of Nokia's Burning Platform Memo. This is when RIM started on BB10, but as we see now, it was already too late. Had they bet heavily on Android and on their strengths (security, gov & enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today.
I hope the Waterloo area survives this well.
Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alas, Q10 does not compete with iOS from 6 years ago.
That's an interesting kneejerk response that one hears variations of whenever anybody brings up any smartphone OS that is not their One True OS. Do you have particular things that it doesn't do that iOS of six years ago did?
The point is not about wether it is better or worse than iOS from 6 years ago, that parent probably believes it is better than that, but the problem is that the choice today is about BB10 or iOS 7. It's competing against todays phones, so how much better or worse it is than the iPhone was at launch is mostly irrelevant to the current market of smartphone buyers.
Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
What were the real problems then that led to their fall? Lack of technology innovation? badly run company and operations? lost touch with the consumer? All of the above?
There were a few key parts to this (and lots more that I'm missing). 1] OS felt dated. Failure to come closer to what customers wanted on a timely basis. 2] Poor app developer experience. 3] A lot of different hardware specs against which to develop apps. 4] Not enough apps. Missing key apps. 5] Slow to innovate after settling on major patent case. The company became very lawyer focused which slowed innovation to a c…
I would add culture to that whereby executive leadership and downward did not admit to problems and felt the platform was infallible. As a graduate of Waterloo, I can attest that between 2008-2011 people in the KW area were steadfast in denying the future of mobile and the underlying problems at RIM/BlackBerry.
Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#38Relevant Google Trends chart: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+wi...
Blackberry's slide starts around October 2011. News search is a little more flat, but that probably reflects the fact that tech journalists like to compare the rise of one thing to the fall of another. Google search reflects what people are looking for in general, so it covers people looking up information on the phone and OS, not just news.
Oddly, Blackberry is still in the lead on image and shopping search. It was tied with iOS on youtube until recently.
Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#39Ethan. I agree that Linda`s stori is really great, on monday I bought a new GMC from having made $6642 this last five weeks and-just over, $10 thousand this past-munth. it's certainly the most-rewarding I have ever done. I actually started 10-months ago and immediately began to earn more than $80.. per-hour. check it out http://goo.gl/HRSfiS
Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
#40like Shannon answered I am impressed that some people able to make $9918 in four weeks on the computer. try this out big57.CoM