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BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

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Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#71

Post by thrownaway2424 »

scrabble wrote: post #23
gummify wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

2) Was one of the biggest. I went to their first-ever developer conferences in San Jose and the very few people who bothered to show up, who were most internal IT-type people from big BlackBerry users like Morgan and Merrill, were in open revolt about how shitty the APIs were, how easy it was to develop a nice-looking application for the iPhone, and how appalling the new touchscreen handset was.

Keep in mind this was in the very early days of iOS when they had almost no features and their APIs were a mess. RIM still had advantages over iOS back then, but they didn't have either the user or developer experience to exploit them.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#72

Post by sivetic »

mikeash wrote: post #34
gummify wrote: post #19

Earlier 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?

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 clos…

You can add badly run company to the list as well. They refused to acknowledge any problems until relatively recently. Even after a senior exec went public with an email describing the problems (link: http://bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-s...), they still continued to deny and paint a rosy picture (which steadily got worse) to the investors and internal staff.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#73

Post by skylan_q »

kunai wrote: post #6
iamshs wrote: post #3

NO. 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…

It doesn't matter if their flagship phone that's out today is better than any mobile device that comes out in the next ten years. The customer has a grudge against them and decided they're losers. I could only image how much people would be for cancer if BB came out with a cure.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#74

Post by bqe »

mkr-hn wrote: post #58
corresation wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why "Google Android" instead of just "Android" (or alternately you could, I suppose, go with "Apple iOS"), because the latter much more closely mirrors what has happened in the market. Unless personal assistant robots have taken off corresponding with Android, I don't think it's being polluted much.

I tried to keep it to the most general term that still associated it with a company. It seems to be smart enough to pick up on the relation between android and the other terms, but the two graphs are still wildly different. I would expect them to be similar. I'm not sure which way to go with it. Fortunately, you're free to tinker with the inputs. This is probably a more interesting graph: https://www.google.com/trend…

I think this is the most interesting (and telling) one: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=android%2C+iphone%2C...

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#75

Post by absherwin »

spodek wrote: post #2

The timeless story of Ozymandias -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias -- (if you don't know the 1818 sonnet by Shelley, read it before downvoting. It's relevant and timeless) I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sc…

Kipling's The Palace is also fitting perhaps even more so for those building today's successful platforms: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_palace.htm.

WHEN I was a King and a Mason - a Master proven and skilled

I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.

I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently under the silt

I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

There was no worth in the fashion - there was no wit in the plan -

Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran -

Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:

"After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I too have known.

Swift to my use in the trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,

I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.

Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it slacked it, and spread;

Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.

Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart,

I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder’s heart.

As he had written and pleaded, so did I understand

The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.

When I was a King and a Mason, in the open noon of my pride,

They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside.

They said - "The end is forbidden." They said - "Thy use is fulfilled.

"Thy Palace shall stand as that other’s - the spoil of a King who shall build."

I called my men from my trenches, my quarries my wharves and my sheers.

All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.

Only I cut on the timber - only I carved on the stone:

"After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#76

Post by bunderbunder »

mikeash wrote: post #34
gummify wrote: post #19

Earlier 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?

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 clos…

Those problems might not have been insurmountable. But the app situation was at the very least an illustration of why they were doomed from the get-go. When you require someone to send in a notarized photocopy of your government ID card before you'll let them develop software for your platform, well. . . I don't even know what to say. That policy spoke for itself.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#77

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

JTon wrote: post #42
scrabble wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

6] It became cool to bash BB (severe brand degradation). BB10 is competitive, but the average consumer doesn't know this and doesn't care

Yeah everyone I've met in the last few years has felt a need to pre-emptively justify their choice of smart phone to me. I guess they get ragged on a lot by their friends for having an outdated phone.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#78

Post by rorrr2 »

martythemaniak wrote: post #35

I'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…

They still have their chances with Android.

All they have to do is make the best damn Android devices.

Considering they have money, they can do it.

Other than that, nothing short of miraculous futuretech invention-acquisition will save them.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#79

Post by bsaul »

started developping apps for mobile in 2009. at that time, i aimed for ios development and blackberry. it took me 2 months to get my first app on ios, and i thought "ok, now let's start learning about blackberry".

So, i downloaded their doc. iirc, they had three ways to develop apps. one was using web technology, and you couldn't do much. then they had two different sets of java apis : an old, discontinued one, with which you seemed to be able to have things work, and a new one, soon to be released, and undocumented.

so i installed their sdk, on my mac, and tried to run a "hello world". but their sdk required windows, because the simulator didn't exist on mac. i had just bought and dual-boot installed a windows 7. but the sdk was just for xp, so i had to run an XP vm inside my windows. then i launched eclipse, to launch the simulator, to launch the Java program that was supposed to run my hello world.

i never was patient enough for that hello world to show.

then i said " well...let's get back to that once a customer ask for a blackberry development".

and guess what, that customer never came.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#80

Post by ywgdana »

Finster wrote: post #65
verelo wrote: post #31

A long time ago i said RIM is the new Nortel. I think I can continue to stand by that statement.

Nortel? Or Novell? I guess both apply, but Novell seems to fit much better.

He likely means Nortel, especially in the sense of it being the Canadian tech darling that fritters away its business into irrelevancy.
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