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Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

bbc.com

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Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#21

Post by noarchy »

GrinningFool wrote: post #9
kabdib wrote: post #5

Microsoft subsidized development of some popular apps for Windows Phone (e.g., Angry Birds). They paid for these. They were necessary to claw away at some market share. Chen seems to think he's entitled . . . and this is one reason why BlackBerry is utterly doomed. Now I wouldn't develop a BB app even if he paid me :-) But while we're at it, maybe we do need some regulation, so we can hold app developers at gunpoint…

They did subsidize a number of major apps that come over to BlackBerry.

>They did subsidize a number of major apps that come over to BlackBerry.

Subsidized, and even subsequently outsourced development to other companies, though I realize this isn't necessarily unusual. It just isn't made public.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#22

Post by cblock811 »

Sorry but maybe Apple and Android don't care about BlackBerry because it's going under. Nobody wants to hang out with a loser and that's what they've become. His whining doesn't help.

I'm sure turning around BlackBerry is a monumental task but I feel like he should be focused on innovating and leading and let his PR team do the writing for public statements.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#23

Post by ksk »

moeedm wrote: post #16
ksk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His phrasing is clumsy because hes not a programmer. The issue is that its rather "impossible" to create BB apps for some services because they're locked down. If NetFlix and Apple were to open the API, that would be enough for anyone (including BB employees) to create the app themselves. I don't think BB is so poor that they couldn't hire a few devs to get the apps written.

Netflix and Apple don't have to open up anything if they don't want to. It's their service and ultimately they can choose which platforms to support. This is just whining from BlackBerry.

>It's their service and ultimately they can choose which platforms to support.

I think you're thoroughly confused. A documented protocol can be implemented on any general purpose platform.

Remember the binary document formats from Microsoft? People had to reverse engineer that shit once upon a time. Not anymore, its all XML now. Microsoft didn't have to "support" Linux. They merely had to document their format. Certainly, OOXML has its own problems but these days almost ANY service/application can read/write MS document formats.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#25

Post by lxfontes »

I'm in favour of competition, but this sounds like "Music industry should be forced to release cassette tapes"

BB was ahead of the curve, had its glory days, dropped the ball on not focusing on enterprise and now it is struggling to find its place.

I do think we need a 3rd big player in this market (other than apple/google). Feels like innovation has became a battle of thinness / big screens.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#26

Post by wtracy »

hvs wrote: post #12
ksk wrote: post #8

Wow, that's a horrible headline. Did anyone actually read the letter? His position is far less extreme. All hes essentially advocating for is open protocols so that popular services aren't locked down to a single platform. It's an interesting question whether government should mandate interoperability.

That's not what he says: Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them.

So his position seems to be that either these services should provide native clients for these platforms, or else they should expose APIs to let third-party developers create native clients.

That's still not a position I'm comfortable with. (I wish everybody exposed APIs to third-party clients, but I understand how hard that can be.) On the other hand, it's a lot more reasonable than unconditionally forcing devs to port their apps over.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#28

Post by moeedm »

ksk wrote: post #23
moeedm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix and Apple don't have to open up anything if they don't want to. It's their service and ultimately they can choose which platforms to support. This is just whining from BlackBerry.

>It's their service and ultimately they can choose which platforms to support. I think you're thoroughly confused. A documented protocol can be implemented on any general purpose platform. Remember the binary document formats from Microsoft? People had to reverse engineer that shit once upon a time. Not anymore, its all XML now. Microsoft didn't have to "support" Linux. They merely had to document their format. Certa…

What are you going on about? Apple and Netflix offer a service, not a protocol that should be used by everyone. They decide which platform to support — this isn't about any protocol.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#29

Post by greggyb »

lxfontes wrote: post #25

I'm in favour of competition, but this sounds like "Music industry should be forced to release cassette tapes" BB was ahead of the curve, had its glory days, dropped the ball on not focusing on enterprise and now it is struggling to find its place. I do think we need a 3rd big player in this market (other than apple/google). Feels like innovation has became a battle of thinness / big screens.

Microsoft is a big player in terms of resources, though not market share (2%?) in smart phones.

Based on their Windows 10 announcement yesterday, they are pushing universal device integration, which should help them in the enterprise market. If they deliver, what they'll have is a full stack of productivity, line-of-business, and analytics platforms through a unified UI for any device. Most enterprises already run Windows and if mobile/tablet integration is seamless with a Microsoft platform, that should be a large gain in market share.

The two big questions are if they can deliver well on the promise, and if they can leverage enterprise adoption to increase their consumer market share.

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