

BlackBerry CEO Wants FCC to Make Developing BlackBerry Apps Mandatory - msabalau
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/21/blackberry-wut/

======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8927539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8927539)

------
Canada
I've done it, and hearing that makes me want to delete it. BB developer tools
are horrible. BB ignores developer questions on their own forums, even though
they appear to have about as much traffic as my blog: Almost none. Also, the
90s called. It wants it's developer portal back. It actually asks if you want
to restrict your app to certain carriers, (please, tell me more about
neutrality!) and for export license numbers if you encrypt anything. You have
to apply to a manual process for push messaging IDs, which demands everything
short of pissing in a cup. And don't even get me started on the latency of
message delivery.

Want apps? Try fixing half of that and see what happens.

And I never got the free device I was promised.

~~~
walterbell
An "API neutrality" proposal would make more sense. E.g. Apple wouldn't need
to develop iMessage clients for non-Apple platforms, but they would not be
able to block non-Apple platform client apps (developed by anyone) from
connecting to the API. See HTTP, IMAP, Exchange, NFS, Windows SMB, etc.

~~~
declan
Apple develops iMessage, and gives it away for free on iOS, as a way to make
its own platforms more attractive.

Let's say this hypothetical "API neutrality" proposal were to go through --
note the actual letter from Blackberry's CEO never mentioned the phrase
"API"[1] -- then Apple might simply stop developing iMessage. Unless your
hypothetical law forces them to make the API available and keep it available
indefinitely to all comers, effectively subsidizing their competitors out of
their own pocket.

[1] [http://blogs.blackberry.com/2015/01/blackberry-net-
neutralit...](http://blogs.blackberry.com/2015/01/blackberry-net-neutrality/)

~~~
walterbell
_> Apple might simply stop developing iMessage_

Or they might find other ways to make Apple platforms more attractive, without
forced bundling of service APIs and platform clients.

Today, many customers use Apple's Mail client to access multiple email
services. Since iMessage competitors (e.g. WhatsApp, BBM) would face the same
regulations, Apple would have the option of supporting multiple message APIs
in their client, giving customers more choice among competing services, and
giving customers more choice among competing clients on each platform. We have
years of data on Apple restrictions on web browser rendering on iOS, they have
many possible mechanisms to advantage native clients of open APIs.

------
mdm_
For some context, read BlackBerry COO Marty Beard's blog post[1] from a few
weeks ago. I don't think Chen or anyone else at BlackBerry thinks the
government should compel anyone to write apps for their specific platform, in
fact that's the very mindset they're criticizing. What they're getting at is
that services should leverage open technologies so that nobody's platform gets
shut out, which I believe is also a core value of Mozilla and Firefox OS, for
example. It's not just a matter of BlackBerry vs. the world; how many apps are
iOS-first or iOS-exclusive, despite the market domination of Android? I think
Chen and Beard are advocating for the tearing down of the "walled garden"
world of mobile platforms.

I use a BlackBerry Passport as my daily driver, and although I have both
native apps and sideloaded Android apps via Amazon App Store and Snap, a lot
of my most regularly used items are mobile websites. Many companies have
excellent mobile sites, you can save them as bookmarks to your homescreen,
they pull in the favicon and look just like apps. You don't have to install
updates for them or worry that they'll stop supporting your OS version or
particular hardware, and a lot of times they're a better experience than the
corresponding native (or sideloaded) apps.

[1] [http://blogs.blackberry.com/2015/01/surprising-winner-of-
htm...](http://blogs.blackberry.com/2015/01/surprising-winner-of-html5-apps-
war/)

~~~
ekianjo
> What they're getting at is that services should leverage open technologies
> so that nobody's platform gets shut out

No one should force any company anything. It's a company's choice to do native
apps, web apps, or whatever they like. They are probably missing some part of
the market by not developing for some platforms or not having mobile versions
of their apps - that's their problem, and it makes them ripe for competition
sooner or later.

And it's also very hypocritical for a company like Blackberry to ask for this
kind of things after largely benefiting from being in position of strength for
many years and doing NOTHING to drive multiplatforms support. Now that they
are at the bottom, they "require" their platform to be considered for all
apps. That's laughable at best.

~~~
xnull2guest
> No one should force any company anything. It's a company's choice to do
> native apps, web apps, or whatever they like.

I disagree with this for a couple reasons. (The first sentence is easy to
disagree with but I won't engage it as a strawman and will assume you mean it
in a very narrow sense).

The reason is that I don't believe that it's purely a company's choice to
create native apps, web apps, or whatever they like. Please bear with me.

In economics there is a tactic known as 'rent seeking'. A simplistic
historical example is the chaining off a river and charging a rent for
whomever tries to use it for shipping/travel. The entity chaining off the
river may become wealthy from rent collection, but they themselves have not
added wealth to the system - they've merely controlled, captured and collected
the wealth that always existed in a riven anyone could have floated down had
there been no chain.

Instances of rent seeking get more complicated in reality. We can simulate
that in our hypothetical by assuming the that the entity chaining off the
river first deepens or widens it, or that they also start renting boats or put
up lighthouses.

Some of these costs are a singular investment cost - i.e. widening the river,
installing lighthouses - and it's sort of suspect that for a fixed investment
one should be able to collect indefinitely from it (see parallels with the
credit card processing infrastructure and ISPs). The entity can always point
to their having widened the river as justification and a real conversation
needs to be had about rent collection.

Other costs accumulate in an ongoing manner - leasing of boats - which may
appear to be fair but it does not justify the rent collection from the chain
and it adds the possibility of special treatment (i.e. through regulatory
capture).

What the computing services industry has figured out is:

A.) One can develop, for a mostly fixed cost, software that is sold as a
service (even if it could easily instead be sold as a commodity)

B.) That in place of chaining over a river one can develop a digital ecosystem
to seek rent from - Windows was successful in doing this for quite a long time

C.) That the networking and ancillary effects of consumers can be used to
magnify the value of the product - put another way that value can be extracted
from customers non-linearly

D.) That on digital platforms vendor lock-in, contributed to by networking
effects, can be used as an anti-competitive tool

Let's take competing with Facebook for example. If you want to compete with
Facebook, even if you have a superior social networking website in some
capacity, you will need to have profiles for a huge number of active people -
but there are essentially zero practical and legal ways to bootstrap such a
competition (the Google+ saga reads almost exactly like this). That is to say
people only need one place online to socialize with friends and family - the
personal social networking market doesn't support ten major competitors. Even
when Facebook's brand is about as toxic as you can get and outrage is high (as
it spiked this past year) there can only be one major personal social network
and any transition must be a violent one. Traditionally, we would call markets
where only one competitor can exist a 'natural monopoly' and we socialize
them.

Similar things are true of application platforms. Microsoft was hit by anti-
competition lawsuits not only for bundling software with its Operating System,
but also for integrating applications into its platform to give first party
applications advantages over third party competitors. This is extremely true
of Apple's iOS store today. Moreover, Apple (let's keep running with Apple for
a moment) has ultimate executive decision about what makes it into its app
store and has used this to block applications from both Google and Microsoft
(who in turn did the same).

These methods of gate keeping and rent-creating are extremely popular, and in
fact have been brought up (in a positive light) at every VC meeting I've had.
Investors will ask how you are going to capture the market, and smile when you
suggest there are network effects and show how there in customer lock-in.

Blackberry has, at this point, been elbowed out of the market. Even if they
have a superior phone they will have an inferior app store (even though Apple,
Android haven't built everything in their stores). They can not get a better
app market because they need app developers. To get app developers they need
people to use their phones. They are in a chicken-egg-paradox.

These sorts of practices elevate first-to-market privilege to extreme new
heights, and turn them into forms of rent-seeking; the platforms that are
invented become captured by those who build them.

Blackberry is asking for recognition that they can not compete in their own
industry. Not because they aren't able to build phones or write phone software
or any other sensible reason. There is a barrier to the phone market for all
but a few blessed companies.

~~~
ekianjo
> Blackberry is asking for recognition that they can not compete in their own
> industry. Not because they aren't able to build phones or write phone
> software or any other sensible reason. There is a barrier to the phone
> market for all but a few blessed companies.

So what ? This is what is happens when you do too little, too late. It's not
that Blackberry was suddenly hit by a meteor and had no way to compete before
the situation changed. They had YEARS of near market monopoly even when the
iPhone was just out. They were completely oblivious to the whole Smartphone
thing taking off. If you don't play, you can't expect to win the game or even
have a fair chance at winning - you just make yourself irrelevant. It's like
saying that it's unfair that you can't buy an apartment in Paris because the
property was cheaper before but now you can't afford it anymore - so, dear
Regulator, please make property prices affordable again so that I can buy my
piece of land. It's nonsensical. Google and Apple built their position through
major investment, and as much as I hate native apps on both platforms, it's
their right to build their walled garden if they want to.

Blackberry has several options in front of them: 1) sell their assets and call
it quits before they are worth nothing. 2) make Android phones like everyone
else and focus on what they are good at (hardware?) and hope to survive with
that. 3) Take a blue ocean strategy and make something nobody else makes. Like
a phone that does not track you or does not leak your personal information to
every application out there. Who knows, there may be a market for this kind of
things too.

~~~
xnull2guest
The reason it is a problem is not because of Blackberry (or any other company)
losing out.

It's because there can only be one or two big app stores and so the market for
phones - be it Apple and Google, Microsoft and Blackberry, or Samsung and
Nexus. Duopolies are bad.

Telling the story from Blackberry's perspective ("the loser") or from Apple's
perspective ("the winner") misses the point.

The perspective to look at this from is the consumer's vantage point, where
more a more even playing field means more competition.

~~~
ekianjo
Nothing prevents Blackberry from making an Android phone, though, and having
their own store instead of the regular Google Store, thus reaping the benefits
of Android applications sold on their platform without having to ask
developers to make entire new versions of app for a losing standard. That's
what Amazon does.

~~~
xnull2guest
My worry is that this like saying (in the 90s) that Apple (or Honeywell,
Novell, Amiga, whatever) should make a Microsoft PC - 'focus on the hardware,
stop asking developers to make an entirely new version of software for their
losing standard' \- instead of taking due anti-trust action against the fixers
of the market.

That's akin to saying "Okay, we found a winner - all OS sales will be to this
one (or two - whatever) companies. Everyone else can compete underneath the
vertical on the final consumer product of this mono(duo)poly but they _can
not_ compete to make a better OS/platform/marketplace/social website".

I mean, I think we both understand each other here. We both understand that
there are companies that monopolize parts of the software industry, and
prevent others from competing.

Can I try to say what I think you're getting at? I don't want to put words in
your mouth, so please correct me if this is not right.

Your analysis, I think, is trying to say that there are other places that a
company can compete when corners of the information industry are monopolized;
and that companies can bide their time in an attempt to win the 'next big
thing'; that the nature of the information industry and its companies is to
leapfrog one over another by 'disrupting' the current paradigm and finding a
throne in the next (wary, thereon, of being similarly usurped). In this
analysis someone would point to competition being fair in the sense that
everyone has some relatively fair chance at being the next big paradigm
setter.

Maybe someone who believed that would say to someone like me that I'm looking
at competition in the market on too small a scale. That I'm look at a fair
phone market when soon everyone will be wearing smart glasses (or whatever)
instead. Someone who believed that might say to Blackberry that if they want
to be a top dog again they can't do it in phones - they have to go make some
digital glasses.

------
andrewfong
While forcing people to make apps for BlackBerry is a terrible, terrible idea,
there's something to be said for restricting content and service providers
from creating artificial OS-specific restrictions.

The example BlackBerry uses is Apple prohibiting the development of an
iMessage client on any platform except iOS. While it's unreasonable to expect
Apple to write an iMessage client for BlackBerry, it's also sort of
unreasonable to prevent BlackBerry from writing its own client.

Another example that comes to mind is Google's treatment from Windows Phone,
which arguably goes beyond simply refusing to write native clients for Windows
Phone to active discrimination -- some incidents that come to mind are the
degradation of Google Maps and shutting off the Windows Phone YouTube client.

In some sense, this is really just an extension of standard antitrust law.
It's anti-competitive to use your dominance in one field (e.g. operating
systems) to squash competition in another (e.g. browsers). The leap here would
be to say that something like iMessages or any of the various Google services
constitute a monopoly (or should be regulated as if they were a monopoly). In
contrast, it's a little more palatable to extend this to something like net
neutrality because many ISPs do effectively have a _local_ monopoly or
duopoly.

Anyhow, not saying that I agree with them, but I think the post is more than a
simple please-make-other-people-write-apps-for-BB plea.

~~~
dshankar
Your example of a law that would force Apple to allow Blackberry to write its
own iMessage client would open two major problems:

    
    
        - companies like Twitter would be forced to allow 3rd-parties to write clients, and could kill Twitter's sources of revenue
        - Blackberry could write an insecure client & harm Apple customers
    

In general, open APIs and third-party development is a great thing. But to
require it? That's extreme.

Besides, isn't proprietary technology an excellent way to differentiate
product offerings? Why must it be accessible on competing platforms and thus
invalidate my differentiating value?

~~~
andrewfong
Which is why I added "not saying I agree with them".

But requiring an open API (or at least not placing restrictions on an existing
API) isn't conceptually all that different from requiring Microsoft to allow
browsers other than IE on Windows, and apparently a lot of people think that's
a good idea.

------
natch
"Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage
messaging service."

Wow. Download the service?

I hate to nitpick just one sentence when his proposal is so mind-bogglingly
ridiculous, but can it be that the quality of the phrasing reflects the
quality of thinking? Given the proposal, I'm afraid so.

------
commentzorro
Seems like the game of blog "telephone" has gotten a bit out of hand here. The
original letter to the senate seems to say that _services_ should be available
to all platforms. (Still a dubious argument though.)

By the time we hit TechCrunch it's being worded as, "... if a company makes an
app for iOS and Android, they must also make a version for BlackBerry and all
other operating systems."

Good link bait though.

------
dogma1138
Considering that BB OS10 has an Android Run Time which runs the vast majority
of Android Apps whats the point?

I've recently purchased a BlackBerry Passport and i absolutely love the
device, I have a OnePlus, Nexus 6, and a MotoG as well and the square screen
format and the keyboard just take it home for me.

As far as internet browsing, reading, and light content creation goes the
Passport is by far the best phone out there atm. It's also one of the first
devices in which BB decided to put not only good but virtually top of the line
hardware so you are getting a quad core 801 snapdragon, with 3GB of RAM and
32GB + SD card.

I would wish that the BB market place would actually get some love it looks
like the Android market from 2008-9 where 99% of the apps are scam, malware,
overpriced shortcut apps, and bible and point me to mecca apps.

Even the "built for BB" apps on the market tend to run worse than their
Android versions running in the Android Runtime Environment. And since even
Google Services can be ported to BB OS10 there isn't even an issue with apps
that require Google Account/Play Services any more.

------
X-combinator
Plainly "Not-going-to-happen."

BlackBerry should pay developers to write apps for them. Not force hardworking
Programmers to develop apps for them.

~~~
axaxs
Been there, done that. At one point they were giving away tablets in exchange
for an app, so thought I'd give it a go. Their development process was more or
less "write an android app, then run it through a converter.". So I did, and
it worked rather poorly. Got my tablet, wrote off Bb for good.

------
mozey
Interesting that no-one has mentioned HTML5 yet. If everyone programmed web
apps for this platform then "app neutrality" would not be an issue. Assuming
the devices all implemented the spec consistently.

~~~
cheald
> Assuming the devices all implemented the spec consistently.

That's an assumption big enough to drive a truck through. In my experience,
every platform needs custom support or hacks to fix little annoyances,
problems and incompatibilities. You end up with de facto per-platform support
even though you're using common tech.

------
venomsnake
Can we first kill the walled gardens? Then we could talk about platform
coverage.

------
verelo
If the BB platform wasn't a hunk of junk I would probably agree, it is
creating an unfair playing field. The reality is, the blackberry dev tools are
not equal, they are terrible and the reason we do not build for BB is not
because we're evil and do not like them, its because they do not provide the
tools to run a profitable business on their sub-par platform.

To be fair, the iOS and Android platforms are far from perfect, but they have
enough user facing features that consumers like that they gain significant
distribution and allows companies to build apps at a profit.

BB need to build better products, maybe then they will see people want to work
with them. This is just a CEO who doesn't get it complaining because he isn't
smart enough to fix the problem he was hired to solve.

~~~
bactatin
Nothing you said is relevant in a free country. No one mandates software, it's
called make your own.

~~~
verelo
To be clear, i'm not saying its the right thing to do and that i morally
agree, i just see the argument they're making in comparison to the net
neutrality argument and feel its a creative position that makes me stop to re-
think things I previously felt were fair and valid. I don't think this is
enough to change my mind on anything, but its interesting all the same.

------
duncan_bayne
Well, he's right in one sense: legislatively mandated net neutrality is
actually no _less_ rights-violating than forcing app developers to support
Blackberry.

~~~
bactatin
Wrong.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Care to elaborate?

------
bdcravens
I admit - I really miss Word Mole and Brickbreaker from the Blackberry. They
should definitely be forced to port those apps to iOS!

------
shard972
Might as well get them on this after they have control of the internet. Could
make some cash.

------
msabalau
I suppose if you are the type of person who thinks that it makes sense to be
CEO of BlackBerry, you are the type of person who thinks it is reasonable to
ask the the government forces developers to write apps for your failed
platform.

~~~
sospep
> I suppose if you are the type of person who thinks that it makes sense to be
> CEO of BlackBerry

Chen is known in the corporate world as somewhat of a turnaround artist.
Blackberry needed a turnaround. That could have been why it "made sense" for
him, or perhaps the 80ish million a year there paying him.

------
malkia
Wow! Wonder if game consoles go same way... lol...

------
coding4all
Blackberry can go fuck itself.

Blackberry had a qwerty board on their phones long before anyone else and yet
they decided to rely on being the only player in town instead of innovating. I
hope Firefox OS takes over and the Blackberry CEO has no choice but to switch
to it because of the great ecosystem.

------
fit2rule
I've got a better idea: make all these fruitcakes use the same freaking OS and
stop re-inventing the same thing over and over - i.e. get the government to
standardize the OS.

Oh, okay, never mind. Free market for the win.

------
EGreg
The distributist in me would say that Platforms Should Be Free, as it's the
public's collective interest since more wealth is created that way.

------
vacri
Every OS? I look forward to seeing Blackberry's apps on IOS. Note, that is
'IOS', the cisco OS, not Apple's 'iOS'. :)

In any case, the concept of 'net neutrality', when applied to code, is 'open
source'. It's not 'you must do free work for me', but 'here is the code
without favouring anyone'.

Of course, this is just a publicity stunt to get people talking about BB.

------
bactatin
Make your own competing apps and quit bothering people.

This guy has the mind of a child. I develop for the platforms I want, if he
wants rules like this, try communist Russia.

------
SocksCanClose
philosophical point here: note the bb ceo's use of language. i hate to get
pedantic, but this all goes back to the greek word γινώσκω (gnoscio), which
means "to think" or "to know". from this word we get, in the english, words
like "decide", "discern" and even "discriminate".

i'll quote mr. chen here, piece by piece: "...policymakers should demand..."
\--> children demand. policymakers (and i assume he means congress, which is
the constitutionally-empowered entity that is able to make law in the united
states) make laws. and laws are supported with the power of the state to do
two things: tax, and kill (in fact, they are the same power). so what this
means is "congress should use its power to use lethal force..."

"... openness not just at the traffic/transport layer, but also at the
content/applications layer of the ecosystem..." \--> net neutrality is about
agnosticism. there goes that word again, 'to think'. here, it's about not
thinking -- particularly not thinking about whose data is traveling along your
pipes. but once you move from the traffic/transport layer down to the
content/applications layer (or heck -- in a chaostheoryesque way, once you
move up to the operating systems layer) the medium is the message! this is the
equivalent of a declining myspace begging congress to force facebook to allow
myspace users to interact with the facebook users. the medium is the message
here: facebook exists because it is not myspace. trulia is not redfin. people
started companies because they disliked the platforms available and they
sought to build better ones.

"...Banning carriers from discriminating but allowing content and applications
providers to continue doing so will solve nothing."

there is zero comparability in this last statement. content and application
providers are built atop an architecture that is by its nature exclusive and
discriminatory. service providers are defined not by what is within them, but
what moves through them. which is to say: teraflops (&c.) per second of data
moving from various points to another. applications on the other hand are
defined by what resides within them. music (spotify: beats needs to allow us
to stream music to its listeners!). videos (vimeo: youtube needs to let us
share their videos!). games (counterstrike: why can't people play our missions
as the master chief?! ¡¡¡net neutrality!!!). the list goes on.

make no mistake: this is one more step down a road that leads nowhere good.

------
moeedm
Hey Blackberry, how about you just make a product that doesn't suck?

