Buying QNX was the true brilliant move on Blackberry's part, it is a very strong platform IMO. Their downfall has been a failure to think laterally on how to leverage it outside of what their core market was. They are now being forced to do that and I think it will work very well for them if it hasn't come too late. I very much want to see them succeed.
Blackberry had its first good idea in years
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: Blackberry had its first good idea in years
#22What I've read about Blackberry it seems like they entered the phone war when it was at level 1 and then tried to reinvent themselves when it had reached level 10. Guys like Mike Lazaridis talk as if they didn't realise that shift had happened. That the smartphone game had become so intensely competitive that their problem went far beyond picking the wrong strategies; they simply didn't have the ability to execute at…
Yep. Success hides failure. A company can do 9 things right and one thing wrong, but if the company does really well then people assume that all 10 things are right. In Blackberry's case it was a lot more than one thing wrong.
Re: Blackberry had its first good idea in years
#23Blackberry just doesn't have traction outside of the US, since most of the rest of the world deeply distrust the architecture of the Blackberry system (i.e. all data sent back to US-based servers). I think this is the one thing they must fix - the perception by the world that Blackberry is just a front for the CIA. Laugh all you want: I've heard this expressed in more than one location here in Europe, enough so that…
(1) Blackberry isn't an American company.
(2) They don't have a ton of traction anywhere these days, but the US was the first market they lost. What growth they have now is in developing nations.
(3) sigh
Re: Blackberry had its first good idea in years
#24“That might be exactly the right transition for BlackBerry to make,” says Dulaney. “The problem is, you just can’t make that transition in the eyes of Wall Street.” In that case, Wall Street is the problem.
No, Wall Street is the owner.
Re: Blackberry had its first good idea in years
#25“That might be exactly the right transition for BlackBerry to make,” says Dulaney. “The problem is, you just can’t make that transition in the eyes of Wall Street.” In that case, Wall Street is the problem.
No, Wall Street is the owner.
You're not actually contradicting his statement, you know. A good many of Blackberry's problems trace back to the company's owners.
Re: Blackberry had its first good idea in years
#26Buying QNX was the true brilliant move on Blackberry's part, it is a very strong platform IMO. Their downfall has been a failure to think laterally on how to leverage it outside of what their core market was. They are now being forced to do that and I think it will work very well for them if it hasn't come too late. I very much want to see them succeed.
QNX is still licensed though black berry (and has been before and after the recent rebuilding). If you buy hardware having anything to do with Optical Rings or Fiber Routers, it likely runs QNX. The goal of their 'restructuring' was to increase profits from software sales (I.E.: Licensing QNX).
The problem is QNX was perfectly profitable on its own doing nothing but that. Now Blackberry has a phone and OS division, one is pulling both down.
Re: Blackberry had its first good idea in years
#27I'm surprised that the author of the article left out QNX. QNX is already the OS of choice for the medical industry and is doing well in other "niche" markets like automotive. QNX in Action: Audi FPK Driver Information Display: http://youtu.be/Wlm6lD23d0g They're still playing off the good idea the had for buying QNX 4 years ago now.
Wow that YT clip is awful, its laggy as crap :( 3d map and big menu both drop down to single digit fps at times.
How can you sell $100K car with laggy dashboard? :(
Re: Blackberry had its first good idea in years
#28The biggest Canadian corporate disaster this century swamps this hiccough from BlackBerry. Nortel was worth almost $400B in 2000 and is now worth $4M, essentially losing $400B of shareholder value this century.
This bodes ill for the rest of the article ...
Re: Blackberry had its first good idea in years
#29What I've read about Blackberry it seems like they entered the phone war when it was at level 1 and then tried to reinvent themselves when it had reached level 10. Guys like Mike Lazaridis talk as if they didn't realise that shift had happened. That the smartphone game had become so intensely competitive that their problem went far beyond picking the wrong strategies; they simply didn't have the ability to execute at…
I agree. It seems like they won twice - once in the late 90s with businesses, and again in the middle of the next decade with consumers. The first comeback was easy enough, that they assumed another one wouldn't be too bad. The whole ecosystem passed them by. To be relevant again they would need to create an entire software portfolio too. Or go into a niche, but they may be bleeding too much money to survive that way.