
How BlackBerry’s bid to one-up the iPhone failed - uladzislau
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/excerpt-how-blackberrys-bid-to-one-up-the-iphone-failed/article24555365/
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Udo

      When he pressed on a digital key, the entire 
      screen clicked down like a giant button, replicating 
      the tactile feel of tapping a BlackBerry keyboard.
    

That sounds tone-deaf to me. The appeal of the physical keyboard is that you
can feel _where_ the keys are, and not as RIM apparently thought, the joy of
tapping on something that depresses by half a millimeter without any tactile
position feedback at all. A touch screen that you have to physically press
combines the worst aspects of keyboards and touch screens, doesn't it?

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geon
> “Did we push the teams too hard?” says Lazaridis. “Probably. Can you show me
> a company that doesn’t? I’d be hard-pressed to believe you. The pressure
> Jobs put his iPhone team through was worse than anything I ever put on my
> team. The fact is, that’s how business runs.”

Asshole.

~~~
pmelendez
Yeah... he is a jerk but he is right, Jobs was way worse and the myriad of
people buying iPhone make look like he was right.

~~~
6d0debc071
The question is whether it's a precondition, or enhancer, of success in this
sort of field. Not whether some particularly well-known business leader
happened to share the property.

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msabalau
So, Apple had the ability to leverage AT&T's weakness to deliver a phone
focused what consumers actually wanted, access to the internet. Blackberry in
response, is pressured by the other carriers to focus on delivering a hard to
execute "better" touch experience, as if that meant anything to anybody. Apple
in the meantime, works on delivering mobile apps. I guess the takeaway is if
others are focusing on the real needs of consumers, that's what has to be on
your roadmap, not the whims of powerful channel partners.

~~~
icefox
Ah, well RIM didn't really sell Blackberry phones to end users, they sold
Blackberry phones to carriers. Carriers were the customers. This makes a
conflict where making carriers happy is more important than end users. The
fact that Apple changed the game and could sell directly to carriers and
provide updates without carrier permission was a game changer (and still is,
just look at the majority of android devices that will never get an update).
This is briefly touched on in the article, but not really highlighted and I am
guessing is talked about more elsewhere in the book.

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tradermcnasty
I gave blackberry a chance, buying one of their OS 10 based devices. But they
simply don't get it. Boot time is measured in days. Lots and lots and lots of
snags and bugs and glitches still persist even though it is now 10.3.

They have services that keep running that then annoy you to log in, even if
you don't want to (no I don't have a BlackBerry login, nor do I want one, and
don't keep bugging me in the alerts).

They send spam alerts, for example when trying to offload their new failing
handset models.

Cut and paste is a disaster.

~~~
CosmicShadow
I'll admit boot time isn't the best, but I never turned my phone off and I've
got 3 day battery life on my passport so I've never run out of battery before
hitting a charger, so a moot point to me.

Also no idea what you are talking about for services. I'm sure if you didn't
use any integrated key features on any OS it would bug you to use them though.

You can also unsubscribe from their newsletter. Copy/Paste doesn't seem that
bad.

~~~
deft
He never signed into BBID. Which is a required feature for BlackBerry. He just
doesn't know how to use his phone.

Sent from my Passport ;)

Also, since this thread seems to have a lot of BlackBerry users, check out my
appp Reader YC.

~~~
willyyr
Reader YC must be one of the apps I use the most on my Passport. Thanks for
creating it :)

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kristianc
'On a scale of 0 to 10, if 10 means no way, then this project is an 11. It’s
impossible. It’s something I would not be able to deliver.'

Project was doomed from that first meeting but it's the same story every time.
It's not lack of innovation that kills companies, it's inertia from within.

Was waiting for the punchline where Storm faced resistance from BB's own
staffers / engineers, and this article didn't disappoint.

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mmrasheed
I attended one of their Blackberry 10 jam sessions in 2012. While having a
conversation with one of their managers, he was emphasizing on the virtual
keyboard in Z10 over and over as if that was the magic sauce of a successful
smartphone. What I realized later, the physical keyboard was really the magic
sauce of blackberry phones. And even though they were stepping into the
virtual keyboard era, it was very hard for them to come out of the shadow of
their golden time.

Apparently the failure of Blackberry 10 devices has proven that keyboard is
not the magic sauce of a successful smartphone anymore.

~~~
bbsuxnblows2
BB can bog off. They chose their customers - the carriers, over the poor end
users. I made the fatal mistake of buying one of their unlocked devices. I
always bought unlocked devices, as, I want to choose the settings, not get a
locked down set of options the networks prefers. But BB? no, insert a SIM into
one of their unlocked devices, and it then subsets the options for those it
has agreed up front with the carrier.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Never again BB.

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protomyth
Looking at the stock price on this one is interesting. RIM's market cap hit
its peek in 2008. So it didn't instantly crater. It took a bit for people to
see the effects of the iPhone.

~~~
epistasis
Do you remember the tech community's and the business world's reaction to the
iPhone in 2008? To say that there was massive skepticism is an understatement.
(There was also a large amount of hype and excitement, but the RIM's stock
price tells the story of which was _actually_ bigger.)

There were plenty of people saying stupid things like "a smartphone is what a
blackberry does or what windows mobile does, this iPhone thing doesn't have
apps or even a keyboard so it's not even a smartphone." Whereas I hope anybody
on HN would immediately be able to see "OMG it has a full web browser, this
changes everything, refuse to call it a smart phone or whatever you want, but
this is the future of mobile."

~~~
protomyth
> Do you remember the tech community's and the business world's reaction to
> the iPhone in 2008?

Yep, and it more inline with what you said than the article's tone of
inevitability. I still wonder what would have happened if RIM attacked the
low-end / pay-as-you-go market aggressively with a basic Blackberry with a
good programmable camera. The text loving younger market might have been fine.

------
chrislgrigg
I remember when the Storm came out. I was doing IT work for small businesses
in the area and many of my clients, the Blackberry Faithful, would get their
latest phones whenever possible. From the consumer side, it was every bit of
the disaster this describes. The keyboard was an unbelievable disaster, it was
horribly slow, crashes constantly, but they kept buying them. The Storm 2 was
a relief, mostly because its improvements made my job so much easier.

What was always really interesting to me about Blackberry/RIM was how they
managed to create some loyal fans who would happily follow their march into
the sea. For years, even as iPhone and Android market share grew, there were
(and probably still are) some power users who refused to even consider
switching. These were exclusively owners or execs at small businesses, mostly
companies with in-house Exchange servers that needed Blackberry Enterprise
Servers. The BES always added an extra layer of pain for everyone, since we
never got good enough with it to be anything more than a hornets' nest. Still,
the Blackberry fans couldn't be swayed, called iPhones "toys," and insisted
that their products were the magic to their productivity.

