

What killed Blackberry? Employees started buying their own devices - RougeFemme
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/20/what-killed-blackberry-employees-started-buying-their-own-devices/

======
alan_cx
Not saying this is typical, but here is my experience of Blackberry.

I was in IT support at the time they came out. One of the things I hated about
IT support, and I found it common with most colleagues, was the idea that if
you are in IT, every thing with a plug or batteries is some how part of an IT
person's skill set. Because we are the clever mysterious people who can fix
the server, we must also be able to explain the MD's new HiFi to him, fix the
microwave or mobile phone, or some such.

So, out comes Blackberry and it suddenly becomes the executive's toy of
choice, and we were expected to support them. No one asked, there was no
meeting or consideration, they just bought Blackberrys themselves, bought them
in and expected us to be configuring and supporting them. Its was like a
suddenly change in infrastructure that just arrived because individuals
insisted on it. And because usually these were senior people, management
expected us to play ball. It was kinda like the whole system being windows and
one day some one installs Linux and expects it to be instantly supported and
integrated, regardless of whether or not the company software actually ran on
it. And early on, that wasn't trivial.

So, what happened in my IT circles was that Blackberry got a bad name because
its was a toy executives lumped on us with out any consideration, let alone
some sort of discussion, and heaven forbid, planning. So, the sort of back
ground vibe was negative, and for many I know, remains so.

So, even though all these years on it is likely to be very unfair, I still see
Blackberry as representing arrogant unthinking executives and the resulting
headaches, and there for negative.

Edit: And I missed the obvious. Im so brain dead at times....

It is suggested that employees buying their own phones killed the Blackberry.
Yet, ironically, in my experience at least, it was employees buying
Blackberrys that got them their traction in the first place.

~~~
melling
A little aside... Developers really should read your post twice and understand
exactly how admins think. These types of departments are usually slow moving,
and really hinder progress. When you read about the people who are stuck on
old browsers and need legacy IE support, it's probably because of all the
"planning and work" that would be required to upgrade.

Anyway, I've always advocated dumping legacy browser support because once the
right people have problems viewing the web, fires get lit and the job gets
escalated.

The only people who can't upgrade their own browsers are the ones with an IT
team standing in their way.

~~~
scott_karana
It's normally not an admin's _choice_ to stay slow and out of date. This is
_especially_ the case in a non-IT-centric business, which nonetheless uses
technology to function.

Typically, the issue is like this:

1) Management demands that a specific solution is installed, and ignores IT's
complaints

2) The solution requires an environment IE 7 (or Windows XP, or... take your
pick)

The admins now have two problems: they need to convince management to move
away from the old solution to a new one (another capital expense), in
_addition_ to maintaining a hateful, old environment so that the business
doesn't break. Senior management doesn't realize they dug their own grave, and
refuses to pay for the capex "just" to have the latest version of the
solution, when the business is seemingly working just fine on the current
environment.

Eventually, after much praying and finger crossing, only one of the two things
saves the admins:

1) The solution is upgraded to support modern software

2) The environment becomes unsupported, and management is forced to reconsider
the upgrade.

Have some sympathy, mate! :(

~~~
melling
So my advice to not support older browsers holds. If the web essentially stops
working, the powers that be will insist on upgrading. Developers will be doing
you a favor. If you've got software that still only runs on IE7, for example,
you'll have to install Chrome or Firefox.

------
ghshephard
In 1998-2002, Blackberries really were the peak of ease of use and efficient
communication/calendar management. Every executive/financial trader/beltway
insider had one. The early 800/900 series Blackberry were like the iPhone of
2007.

In 2007 the iPhone was seen as an oddity by those who used their blackberries
for business - without a keyboard, and really rudimentary communication tools,
it wasn't ready for real-time business communication. But wow - that browser,
and maps app was something else; and then Apple let third parties develop
applications for the iPhone...

By 2009, after a couple iterations of the iPhone, I was running a network
engineering team, and provided everyone on the team a blackberry so they could
communicate real time with each other (We had a corporate BES server). Every
single one of them was left in a desk drawer, as people ignored them and just
connected their iPhone to their iMap account and used SMS for the real time
stuff.

I just got back from a 4 week engagement in Singapore, and I was working daily
with fifteen people in five organizations across four companies, distributed
across three sites and field visits. We had to perform real-time communication
during some particularly tricky diagnostic event on hardware, at the same time
we were tracking some configuration remediation in a meter-lab. Every single
person present (except for one poor Field Engineering manager from California
who showed up with a non-GSM android) kept in touch with WhatsApp. We didn't
even have to supply the four college students we hired to do some field-
evaluations with phones - they showed up with their own devices (all
Androids), and we simply added their accounts to our group chat system.
Latency was on the order of a second even with Singapore's surprisingly iffy
data environment (at least from the perspective of my California AT&T iPhone)

I think a major contributor to the death of blackberry was a combination of
iMap ports open to the internet + Exchange Support in iPhone + awesome
replacements for BBMS (inexpensive SMS, Viber, Whatsapp, etc...) - every key
advantage of the Black Berry, with the exception of that keyboard, has an
equivalent or better replacement today on the Android/IOS platform, with the
addition of a world class app suite that's available on the Android/iPhone,
but will never, ever, come to the Blackberry (except in the form of Android
sideloading - but that further kills the need to develop blackberry specific
apps)

That's what killed the Blackberry.

~~~
sokoloff
Yours is the first time I've ever seen IMAP "spelled" iMap. In fact, I
couldn't even connect the dots between the two until the second time you used
it.

~~~
colkassad
Yeah, I didn't even realize that until you said it. Whenever I see an iThing,
I assume it's something Apple. The power of branding.

~~~
sokoloff
For others: IMAP long predates the iPhone.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protoco...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol)

~~~
jrockway
I don't think anyone was suggesting it wasn't. The problem was spelling it
wrong in an ambiguous context.

------
s_q_b
What killed the Blackberry?

Blackberry made a tremendously successful high featured _phone._ Then Steve
Jobs and Apple released a full-fledged minicomputer that fit in the palm, with
a usable interface, that happened to also function as a phone.

The iPhone killed off more than the Blackberry. It killed all off _all phones_
in favor of small computers that happen to function as phones.

~~~
glomph
I don't think it makes sense to claim apple did anything that major to the
market when you look at the data
[http://i.imgur.com/0WS4mQx.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/0WS4mQx.jpg)

~~~
s_q_b
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive. What they hide is
vital.

iOS is responsible for more than the raw numbers suggest. iOS begat Android,
WP7, and countless lesser imitations. Whether this was through inspiration, as
I believe, or outright theft, as Apple maintains, is immaterial.

The fact is that the modern smartphone market was born with the introduction
of the iPhone. All else before was prelude.

~~~
mmahemoff
Google acquired Android before 2 years before iOS came about. I think it was
more a case of "adjacent possible" developments [1] happening in parallel and
learning from each other (as great artists are prone to do).

1\. [http://www.practicallyefficient.com/home/2010/09/28/the-
adja...](http://www.practicallyefficient.com/home/2010/09/28/the-adjacent-
possible)

~~~
iamshs
Actually Android (in development) looked very similar to Blackberry before
iPhone's release.

[http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Li...](http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Like_BlackBerry_Before_the_iPhone_)

[http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/googles-android-os-
early-...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/googles-android-os-early-look-
sdk-now-available/)

[http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/10/27/android-handsets-
bef...](http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/10/27/android-handsets-before/)

~~~
commandar
Your first link is actually debunking that. They had prototypes that looked
like Blackberry devices, yes, but _in the same video_ they show a prototype
with a touchscreen-driven UI as well.

~~~
iamshs
Now have a look at the touchscreen UI itself, it borrows heavily from
blackberry style bottom bar. The video was uploaded on Nov 11, 2007....iPhone
released in June 2007. (Let's keep aside the fact that Eric Schmidt sat on
Apple's board) Six months is not much of a developmental time, but not exactly
less time to polish such stuff for a company the size of Google. See the
progress here (May 2008):
[http://news.cnet.com/2300-1046_3-6240422.html](http://news.cnet.com/2300-1046_3-6240422.html)
Only Touchscreen UI shown and much more polished. HTC Dream was released in
Oct 2008.

------
usernew1817
Here's my 2 cents, I worked as an intern (coop) and have subsequently worked
in other tech companies in Waterloo that have ex-RIM employees. I think the
problem was mainly managers, a lot of the managers didn't program, some held
cs degrees but they hadn't programmed in a while to the point where they
really couldn't really access the code, so basically never really looked at
code (the code itself was ok because other programmers did). However, what did
happen was a lot of managers started accessing their team based on how much
they looked like they were doing, in short how busy they looked. Some of the
smartest developers are terrible and office politics, emails and at meetings .
Without emails or engaging in meetings it gave an impression that the
developers didn't care, I've seen some incredible developers get fired because
they didn't fit the "company culture." This was acceptable because "company
culture" was in at the time, but it was just a way to support manager bias.
For example, I knew this guy who would usually come to work late and only
answer emails at lunch and keep a fairly chill attitude, but would usually
stay late 6-7 until he did his 8+ hours, however in the eyes of the manager
who was there from 9-5, the picture looked completely different, he was fired
a few months later. Now I was there for a short time and only part of one
team, so I can't speak for the whole organization, but I've worked for other
tech firms in the area whose managers were ex-RIM and they basically did the
exact same thing. In short, 1) having mangers that are heading an engineering
team should be programming 2) employees should be peer-reviewed and not at the
mercy of the managers (a lot of sucking up happens when the manager has that
much power)

This probably isn't the main thing that killed RIM, there were probably
hundreds of reasons, but over time this put in a culture of complacency, and
there probably isn't much upper management could have done, because it was all
done for the sake of improving "company culture"

~~~
myth_drannon
One guy from my university comp-sci class became a project manager in RIM. He
was absolutely clueless, couldn't do any homework and just copied stuff from
other people or ask for help ALL the time.

~~~
ahelwer
I take issue with you criticizing a student for asking for help. It seems to
be an issue in comp sci; some proportion of students are always watching for
others to ask for help so they can smugly lord their infinite self-learned
(lol) knowledge over them.

~~~
robryan
It depends on the understanding people come away with. In some cases people
will just get their hand held right through anything practical and come away
not actually understanding the material.

That is different to people who don't understand something but ask the right
questions so that they understand and can apply in future.

------
stephengillie
So...once users were able to exert a choice, they opted for products which
benefitted themselves more? This argument seems to admit that Blackberry
products were inferior at the time. It's like saying that what killed IE6 was
_allowing_ people to install Firefox.

~~~
sambeau
I'm pretty sure that what killed IE6 was IE7. I'm also pretty sure that is
keeping IE8 & 9 from finally shuffling off too is people being prevented from
installing a browser of their choosing in their workplace.

~~~
stephengillie
I'm pretty sure that MS & corporate IT depts were more than willing to stay on
IE6 forever if they could. The gap between IE6 & IE7 was larger than almost
any other IE release.

~~~
sgt101
Legacy IE is maintained by the corporate IT Kata I used in another comment on
this thread.

"Sure Boss, I'll sort that out for you, I'll get a business case for the
migration together over the weekend, can we meet on Monday to go through it
and sign off?"

Moving off IE6/7 costs £x k, because there are 1->1000 applications (I know my
company has about 30 major ones) that are known to need changes to function on
later versions properly (even with compatibility mode) and 100+ that will need
some testing.

Now, when I say these applications need work, often the problems are
incredibly trivial, but in a corporate these things (a button has moved, a
menu item doesn't work but the button does, you need to hit the ok button not
hit <enter> etc. GENERATE HELPDESK CALLS!

And the calls don't go away after 2 days as the users get used to it - they
are ongoing, there will be escalations, your manager's manager will be teased
at the SMT event, worse your manager's managers peers in other corporates will
get war stories featuring your manager in A BAD LIGHT (think about the
implications of that) all of which is unfair and silly.

But this is what will happen.

Ok - you get the case done, you see your boss. The number is £30k; is it in
the budget? No.

The consequence of not doing it? Your manager shows the case to her manager.

The consequence of doing it without the migration: see above.

End off.

------
nrmilstein
The author says, "BlackBerrys have never been particularly attractive,
cutting-edge, or user-friendly." I've never actually owned a BlackBerry, but I
was under the impression that they were some of the best devices around,
especially for doing business, before the iPhone came along. I've heard people
say that they still believe the BlackBerry had the most superior email
functionality of any device to date. The iPhone changed all that, of course,
but before, I think they were very good devices.

~~~
nknighthb
That speaks to how _bad_ everybody else was. The first BlackBerry was
technologically similar to contemporary PalmOS devices with a GSM module
bolted on. Boring. Predictable. But they actually worked.

RIM won by showing up and not being totally incompetent. They lost by being
complacent.

~~~
nrmilstein
Everything kind of looks bad to me now pre-iPhone – the things was seriously
years ahead of its time.

------
sambeau
The title is referring to 'Corporate Employees' as opposed to employees of
Blackberry.

The Thesis goes: employees bought iPhones and brought them to work, enough (or
senior enough) employees were able to force IT departments to support them.
Afterwards no-one wanted to use their crappy old phones.

If only this could happen for Browsers, too!

I think it's time to start a campaign for 'Bring Your Own Browser To Work
Day".

~~~
ChuckMcM

       > I think it's time to start a campaign for 'Bring Your Own Browser To Work Day".
    
    

It is entirely possible that that is what tablets are. I suspect that some of
the crufty old "we see every packet" IT groups the notion that you can have
your own tablet at work getting 4G network access outside the company control
structures is exceptionally challenging.

~~~
sambeau
I support this theory. It makes sense to me.

------
webreac
Blackberry was the best smartphone with a keyboard. It was not only the choice
of enterprises, but also the choice of users who do not like touchscreen as a
keyboard. The smaller screen (because of the presence of the keyboard)) means
also better battery duration. They have killed all these advantages to become
a pale copy of iphone with a bad UX, half assed between full touchscreen and
keyboard. I think that copying iphone ergonomy was a bad marketing move that
place them as a follower. I think blackberry could succeed as the leader of
smartphones with keyboard. Now, they have lost their soul. Of course, this is
only a single aspect, the other points described in many other posts are also
important.

~~~
ghshephard
I agree that Blackberry could own almost all (90%+) of the market for world
class, enterprise friendly, secure-email devices w/keyboard.

The problem is that market is about 1% of the market for the touch-screen,
independent-app rich, no-keyboard market.

It's not an uncommon situation - do you sell your soul to chase the $$$ or
stick with your core mission, money be damned.

------
throwaway1979
Unless I am missing something, the title of this article is very misleading.
Also, very low on content IMHO.

~~~
stephengillie
Yea it's a Sunday editorial, written for the ad impression count.

~~~
binarybits
For the record, I wrote it on Friday. And almost all articles on the web are
"written for ad impression count."

------
leetrout
> Consumers care about attractive designs, user-friendly interfaces, and
> innovative features.

Tangentially- when I went to check out the Z10 it was locked in a demo mode. I
couldn't figure out how to look at anything on the phone that they didn't want
me to see with "helper" sales pitch notes. I finally found a real phone one of
the employees was carrying and was able to try it out (and buy something
different).

I couldn't believe they (or AT&T) would think so little about their customers
and providing a real experience on the device. It insulted me. Maybe it
changed later...

------
highace
I'd love it if Blackberry switched to Android. The top-end Bolds look great,
and you just can't beat their keyboards for smashing out a length of text
longer than a sentence.

------
robotcookies
This article suggests that BB lost because it did not focus on the consumer
soon enough. I'm going to completely disagree and argue that even if they had
done this, they would still be dying now. Their fate would have been the same
had they made consumer friendly phones in 2008.

In 2008 I believed android would dominate the smartphone market. This was even
before the first android phone was brought to market. Most consumers had not
even heard of android back then and the iPhone was quickly gaining market
share. Why did I think this back then?

What killed BB is, at core, the result of Geography. It is not only the fate
of societies, a la Jared Diamond, but the fates of tech companies that
geography can influence. In 2008, I was living in northern California and you
could sense the amount of developer interest in android. What android did and
BB couldn't do (or really try) was to win over developers. Many were upset at
Apple's process for publishing apps. Google did everything to address those
concerns. Instead of winning over consumers first, android won over the
developers who then made the apps to bring those consumers. BB was just too
far away and too out of touch to see any of this.

The world is not flat. Place matters. If it were as simple as focusing on
consumers, why did Nokia lose despite doing this all along? -Geography! And
why did android win despite not initially focusing on consumers? (the G1 was a
crappy phone). The winners (android and IOS) won because they're located in
Silicon valley where most of the best developers are. The losers (Nok, RIMM)
lost because they weren't.

~~~
acheron
It's kind of amusing how parochial a lot of the SV types are.

No, "the best developers" are not all in California.

~~~
mikeash
I wonder how the theory is supposed to explain RIM and Nokia's great success
in the past. Are we supposed to ignore that because they're failing now? No
success lasts forever, and Apple and Google too shall pass.

~~~
robotcookies
Apple and Google weren't even in the field during Rim and Nok's best years. If
they had never entered, it's possible Rimm and Nok would still be the top dogs
now.

------
kaonashi
They tried to force a Blackberry on me at my last job, I just turned it down
as I had no desire to carry around multiple phones with me.

------
corresation
The enabler for the death of Blackberry was Microsoft Exchange / ActiveSync.
When executives realized that the much cooler, fun, life-integrated iPhone
could also hook into their email, that forced IT's hand in allowing
alternative platforms.

If the iPhone didn't appeal to the top tier, the Blackberry would have reigned
supreme in corporations.

~~~
qu4z-2
What does life-integrated mean?

~~~
corresation
A part of their entire lives instead of just being for their work life.

~~~
qu4z-2
Thanks

------
adrinavarro
What really killed BBRY was not providing any added value. And actually
destroying any added value that they had over competitors (I made another
comment about that in another thread — I don't want to get too annoying).

The "BYOD" culture is some crucial damage for BlackBerry. But what will wipe
them off the map isn't really that, but rather, not being even an option for a
second device, enterprise-only. Because they've got nothing to add.

