
BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M - mrcharles
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/blackberry-to-cut-4-500-jobs-1.1862420
======
spodek
The timeless story of Ozymandias --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias)
\-- (if you don't know the 1818 sonnet by Shelley, read it before downvoting.
It's relevant and timeless)

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away".

EDIT: Thanks for the link to the excellent Breaking Bad video. For what it's
worth, I haven't seen an episode since season 3 so didn't realize the
coincidence. My pop culture connection would have been to Watchmen.

~~~
jmduke
There's something particularly ironic about calling _Ozymandias_ timeless.

~~~
mjburgess
The poem is itself ironic... it's about Ramses III who rule c. 1000 BC and yet
was famous enough that poetry would be inspired by him 3000 years later.

~~~
mturmon
I agree. When I was younger, I only got the obvious message about the
transience of material accomplishment. The poem is more multifaceted than
that.

One starting place is to think about the layers of interpretation (Ramses ->
sculptor -> traveler -> narrator). Everyone concerned is still talking, in
different ways, about the memory of Ramses.

As long as we're on the topic, here's one of my favorite expressions of
parallels between us and people in the past:

[https://plus.google.com/+Cornell/posts/MSaUEUpVB8q](https://plus.google.com/+Cornell/posts/MSaUEUpVB8q)

This bench sits behind the library at Cornell University.

------
martythemaniak
I've been thinking about RIM lately and I think they basically had chances to
turn themselves around, but took neither.

The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google,
Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and
are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to
acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had it come out
in 2011. With decent hardware, a solid OS, their own style and riding on BBM
(big at that time), they might have staked a sustainable 10-15% chunk of the
market.

The second chance was '10/'11, around the time of Nokia's Burning Platform
Memo. This is when RIM started on BB10, but as we see now, it was already too
late. Had they bet heavily on Android and on their strengths (security, gov &
enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today.

I hope the Waterloo area survives this well.

~~~
ChuckMcM
These are always more easily seen looking from the future into the past, than
they are in the past looking to the future.

Few companies, with the market share RIM had, see threats as 'near term'.
Fewer still have a deep appreciation for the entirety of the technology stack
and the time it takes to move things. This is especially true of young
executives but can happen to anyone.

RIM's technology stack matured over many years, from idea to business
juggernaut. What that tells you is that moving the stack is also going to take
years, so if you're experienced you start looking 5 - 6 years out not 1 - 2
years out.

When the iPhone hit, and Google was close behind, that was a huge signal. But
Ballmer and Microsoft dismissing it, was a huge counter-signal. If you're an
enterprise IT company, and the biggest company in Enterprise IT in the market
place is dismissing the iPhone as a 'fad', you might be inclined to believe
them rather than your own people who are saying "this is a threat".

At some point you get behind the power curve. In airplanes once you are behind
the curve there is literally nothing you can do which will prevent you from
eventually crashing. The same it true in companies. RIM apparently decided
early on that Microsoft was a more credible indicator of the future than
Apple/Google _for their marketplace_. And they have paid the ultimate price
for that.

~~~
Touche
nit, but Ballmer did not dismiss the iPhone, he dismissed the $500 on contract
iPhone. And he even said "it may sell very well". Here's the actual video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U)

I know it's become fun to pretend like Ballmer dismissed the iPhone but I have
a hard time watching that video and seeing anything like that.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is a fair point. Microsoft's behavior however, with regard to
"supporting" the iPhone as a new way to do business, was tepid at best.

~~~
levosmetalo
Why would Microsoft have to "support" the iPhone way back then? I'm pretty
sure they would have supported it if they had ready iPhone competitor back in
the days, but given that they didn't have it, the only logical thing to do
about it is to ignore it and silently working on catch up, which is exactly
what they did.

~~~
ChuckMcM
At the time Microsoft was the single largest supplier of IT software to
enterprises. Part of the appeal of Blackberry phones was they integrated well
with the systems used in the enterprise.

In that environment, if Microsoft starts supporting iPhone like they support
Blackberry (Exchange integration, a sharepoint app, what have you) then it is
a strong signal that Microsoft has looked at the iPhone, and what it
represents, and has decided its going to be a 'big deal' in the Enterprise
space going forward.

It's an imperfect signal to be sure, but often treated like an 'outside
opinion.' Using an example from my own history, I was trying to get NetApp to
build a filer on the Opteron hardware and the lead marketing guy wouldn't
believe the AMD64 stuff was "real" until Dell started shipping a server using
it. That was a tool he was using to validate (or invalidate) my argument that
AMD64 was the future of the x86 architecture.

So RIM, seeing Microsoft's response, might use that to "confirm" an internal
opinion that the iPhone (and perhaps smart phones in general) wasn't a serious
threat.

I of course have no way of knowing one way or the other, but I've seen it
happen that way, and the hypothesis fits the actions as we know them today. I
presume they could have started/done the BB10 "anytime" but only started once
they had collectively internalized the threat to their market. So by that
reasoning I speculate they didn't believe it to be a threat until much later.

------
bsaul
started developping apps for mobile in 2009. at that time, i aimed for ios
development and blackberry. it took me 2 months to get my first app on ios,
and i thought "ok, now let's start learning about blackberry".

So, i downloaded their doc. iirc, they had three ways to develop apps. one was
using web technology, and you couldn't do much. then they had two different
sets of java apis : an old, discontinued one, with which you seemed to be able
to have things work, and a new one, soon to be released, and undocumented.

so i installed their sdk, on my mac, and tried to run a "hello world". but
their sdk required windows, because the simulator didn't exist on mac. i had
just bought and dual-boot installed a windows 7. but the sdk was just for xp,
so i had to run an XP vm inside my windows. then i launched eclipse, to launch
the simulator, to launch the Java program that was supposed to run my hello
world.

i never was patient enough for that hello world to show.

then i said " well...let's get back to that once a customer ask for a
blackberry development".

and guess what, that customer never came.

~~~
JesseObrien
I had almost this exact same scenario happen to me. As a developer, I was
excited to see what new fun things at the time (2009) were coming out of RIM.
To my dismay, like yours, I couldn't even get a hello world to run after much
tinkering and configuring. After I learned that they didn't even use the SDK
they released into the wild in their own development, I knew it was a lost
company. Dogfood and all that.

------
maxsilver
It's unfortunate, as someone who just purchased a Q10 (switched from Android),
I think they've finally got their act together and released something
excellent.

The Q10's battery life is great, the hardware keyboard is solid and travels
well. The Paratek antenna gets the best reception and data connection of any
device I've ever used. The BB10 software isn't great, but it's decent. (It's
certainly far better than where WebOS / iOS / Android was when they launched.
Even today, BB10.2 is significantly better / more powerful than Windows Phone
8, even if the UI is less well defined).

Their story, to me, seems almost down to timing. They're executing pretty well
right now, it's just two to three years too late.

It will be sad to watch all that hardware die. In a year or two, there
probably won't be _any_ devices available that have a large battery, solid
hardware keyboard, and decent cellular data reception.

~~~
GrinningFool
This is frustrating - I agree that they've finally gotten their act together,
particularly with 10.2. The writing has been on the wall for a while - I
stopped building apps for them earlier this year.

I've tried Android and iPhone and don't particularly want to return to either
one. The former because of too many apps that want all the permissions under
the sun while the OS offers a complete lack of fine-grained controls of
them[1], and a subpar UI experience (subjective, I know). The latter due to
lack of control without rooting it. My windows 8 desktop experience has
spoiled that OS for me on a phone, fairly or otherwise.

But it begins to look like I will have no choice very soon. I hope they manage
to pull out of this - they're still releasing a new flagship, and have other
irons in the fire - but it's not looking good.

[1] as in 'yes, let the app get to GPS, but no do not let it get to my
personal data or phone info'. Something BBOS legacy offered, and BB10 only
slightly less - when you make an app you were expected to plan for the user to
deny functionality and degrade nicely.

~~~
maxsilver
I completely agree, especially around the permissions.

I'm also worried that this is the end. Every previous company thats built
decent 'prosumer' or 'power-user' phones appears to be dead or dying.

I loved my Palm Pre (WebOS), it was my first smartphone. They're dead now.

I upgraded to an HTC Arrive (Windows Phone 7), but HTC's slowly dying off, and
no one makes (or Microsoft blocks?) hardware keyboards for that platform now.
Windows Phone also didn't support any notifications or push notifications at
the time (and 'live tiles' aren't solid enough to replace them).

I upgraded to a Motorola Photon Q. Software's ok, and there's no terrible
skin. But the battery life and reception are both terrible (and the battery is
sealed in, so every day it gets worse...). I knew the sealed battery was a
mistake, I tried it anyway and got burned. Won't be making that mistake again.

The Q10 was my last refuge. When BlackBerry goes away, I suspect there will be
_literally nothing left_ for me to turn to.

------
mrcharles
Was digging up some numbers. In 2010, BlackBerry still sold more phones than
Apple.

How the mighty have fallen.

~~~
gummify
What were the real problems then that led to their fall? Lack of technology
innovation? badly run company and operations? lost touch with the consumer?
All of the above?

~~~
mikeash
I'd put it under both "lack of technology innovation" and "lost touch with the
consumer".

Around 2007 with the release of the iPhone, the smartphone market shifted
massively. Within a relatively short time, people wanted phones with
(relatively speaking, for the time) gigantic screens, no hardware keyboards,
fluid touch-based UIs, and abundant third-party apps. Apple delivered on this,
and Google followed fairly closely behind.

BB was caught flat-footed and took years to catch up on the UI and form
factor, by which time they were too late to catch up on the apps, which is
probably what ultimately killed them. BB's success was in a time where the
phone maker and the carrier were expected to provide nearly all of the useful
functionality on a phone, whereas with iPhone and Android, while they're still
expected to be useful out of the box, it's also expected that the user will
heavily customize them with third-party apps.

~~~
bunderbunder
Those problems might not have been insurmountable. But the app situation was
at the very least an illustration of why they were doomed from the get-go.
When you require someone to send in a notarized photocopy of your government
ID card before you'll let them develop software for your platform, well. . . I
don't even know what to say. That policy spoke for itself.

------
eli
I was really hoping they could turn it around -- by all accounts the new
phones are pretty nice and the mobile OS market could use some more serious
competitors. But they have virtually no apps and no clear path to getting
apps. Combine that with BYOD policies that let employees bring their own
phones instead of having one issued and their whole sales model goes out the
window.

~~~
contextual
They don't have some big name apps like Audible yet (there are substitutes)
but the app selection is decent. There are even some gems for BlackBerry you
won't find anywhere else.

------
bio4m
Speaking as an enterprise customer on long upgrade cycles, RIM/Blackberry
badly judged the situation vis a vis their enterprise customer base.

The new Z10 was not compatible with their large install base of Blackberry
Enterprise Server. Anyone still running BES at the time the Z10 was introduced
was likely to be a shop interested in security and control of the mobile
platform their end users were using.

Which is why businesses like my employer and many others kept buying BB OS7
devices (did you notice they didnt break numbers out and actually mentioned
BBOS7 as a significant portion during their investor call ?)

TL;DR: They thought all their enterprise customers would upgrade fast, they
guessed wrong.

------
tossaway1900
We're closing in on the launch of cross-platform BBM, and much of the work for
that wasn't even done internally. They contracted that stuff out. Now they're
cutting actual BB people. A lot of it is dead weight, and the usual bloated
middle management, but I can't wait to see who else gets the axe here.

Make no mistake, the goal is to sell the company at this point. That is why
BBM is suddenly the focus. They know that they aren't going to stay afloat
with phone sales. They'll cut to the bone, and beef up one of their main
commodities (BBM) until the sale happens.

~~~
HorizonXP
This is incorrect. It was mostly done in-house, with some outside help.

~~~
tossaway1900
Mostly? This may depend on perspective. The infrastructure behind the app is
definitely in-house, but the UI isn't at all.

------
iamshs
NO. Teary eyed. :(

3.7 million phone sales are nothing. Only if they had copied iOS the Samsung
way in time.

~~~
kunai
Why? The problem isn't with the phones. The Z10 and Q10 are fantastic and BB10
is probably the best business-centric OS ever written. The problem is that the
applications are just not there, and that people associate BlackBerry with
reboots, battery pulls, and outdated, clunky software, even though that's not
the case.

It's an image problem, not a phone problem. They can't market like Apple used
to. If they could, they would get more sales, but their marketing is just
pitiful.

~~~
pinaceae
"best business-centric OS" and there it is.

same idiocy as MS.

it's either user-centric or it isn't. BB catered to "business", but that meant
IT. the users, managers, switched privately to iPhones. then demanded them
from IT. boom, headshot.

BYOD is what kills "business-centric".

BB realized that, tried to position BBM as a user centric thing. too late. and
schizo, as the playbook slogan "amateur hour is over" showed.

~~~
mrtron
It used to be business-centric was enough.

Now user-centric is coming fast and hard to the business market.

------
Touche
I sympathize strongly with the people who lost their job. I don't, however,
sympathize with the company that made their decision to go it alone despite
overwhelming evidence that there isn't room for another platform. iOS,
Android, the Web. That's it. That's all there's going to be for the
foreseeable future in mobile. Even Microsoft is failing at this. How much
evidence does a company need to see that their strategy was doomed?

It's classic innovators dilemma. BlackBerry could think of nothing but
protecting their existing business, even with failure staring them in the
face. They should have been planning more for the next phase of the company
(whether that be selling enterprise servers or whatever else) and made a
small, cheap, play at restoring their phone business (probably by forking
Android).

~~~
jusben1369
"I don't, however, sympathize with the company that made their decision to go
it alone despite overwhelming evidence that there isn't room for another
platform."

\- I'm confused. They were THE leading mobile platform. So they didn't decide
to enter a crowded market. The market got super crowded and they didn't
respond well. But I don't understand the "go it alone" unless you mean
innovating too late to roll out a new OS that was touch driven vs BB keyboard.

~~~
Touche
They decided to compete on operating systems well after it was obvious that a
3rd operating system wasn't going to make it. Numerous companies had failed or
were failing on that strategy already.

~~~
speeder
They were ALREADY on first place, what you are saying makes no sense.

------
moca
I have built software for large BlackBerry customers and met with RIMM people
before. 3 years ago, I had suggested they should create an enterprise-oriented
Android phones, such like Amazon created media-oriented tablets. 3 years ago,
RIMM was still the #1 in enterprise smartphone market, and they had great
chance to succeed in that area.

However, most companies are afraid to compete on fair battle background
(Android). So instead of one, RIMM chose to fight 4 battles at the same time,
hardware, software, ecosystem, marketing, and it lost on all of them. Now it
is too late to change the fate. RIMM management was too afraid to change
(really really afraid). It is said when I met RIMM people, and saw they
couldn't do anything to save the sinking ship.

------
methodin
If any new phone wants a decent market share they have to start with the
developers - they are the ones who will carry it along until enough 2 year
contracts expire to grow the user base. Blackberry simply failed on this front
so it's no wonder they are struggling. They followed Microsoft's path of
screwing developers which clearly was a bad move.

There is always room for new devices, though. If FF or Ubuntu develop the
repertoire with the developers first they have a fighting chance. There are
pretty much no companies left that can sell just on their history and existing
fan-base alone.

~~~
alex_c
>They followed Microsoft's path of screwing developers which clearly was a bad
move.

Can you elaborate? From what I've seen RIM made a pretty significant effort to
court developers to its platform - the users and revenue just weren't there,
so it was not that tempting for developers no matter what RIM said or did.

~~~
maxsilver
I think the parent's mistaken BB7 with BB10. With the modern BlackBerry
software, they made a hugely significant effort, way more than Microsoft did.

They included an entire Android 4.x runtime in their operating system, just so
developers could take their existing Android apps and deploy them to BB10 with
roughly 'one-click' worth of effort.

Short of re-writing every app on the face of the planet, I'm not sure how
BlackBerry could have made it easier for developers to port or submit BB10
apps.

------
eliben
It's amazing what a killer the smartphone market turned out to be. Nokia. RIM.
Microsoft are in bad trouble. Intel. who else?

~~~
colmvp
Is Intel really in any trouble? They're got a huge dominance on laptop/desktop
processors, no?

~~~
eliben
Desktops are a huge, but declining business. In laptops they already have
serious competition in Samsung's ARM-based Chromebooks. Besides, laptops also
don't grow nearly as fast as smartphones and tablets. In markets, it's the
growth that matters most, not the current revenue.

~~~
tsotha
Intel is fine. They have such a huge manufacturing and capital advantage they
can afford to lose time after time, whereas the likes of AMD and ARM can only
afford to lose once. Intel will own the mobile space in a decade or so.

~~~
eliben
Could you define how "ARM" would lose, given that "ARM" is an ISA which has
different licensing levels and is implemented by multiple companies (including
some that are larger than Intel - Samsung, Qualcomm, Apple).

~~~
tsotha
I understand all that. Eventually companies like Samsung will be forced to
abandon ARM because they'll get a better power/performance ratio from Intel
than they can produce in house.

------
flatfilefan
From what I have gathered they have not managed the growth hiring people below
the original level. A company with 12000 employes should be unmanageable
because of bureaucracy anyway. After some point new people only slow you down.
Hope the old core is still there and something will finally come out of this.

------
kineticfocus
The juxtaposition of these two headlines on Ars struck me with some awe:
"Grand Theft Auto V rakes in over $1 billion in three days", "Blackberry warns
of near-$1 billion loss this quarter". Especially since they're more tangible
'billions' than the Instagram deal.

------
Raphmedia
Good riddance. I was a fan, until I actually had to contact their customer
support.

Bought an android right after.

------
verelo
A long time ago i said RIM is the new Nortel. I think I can continue to stand
by that statement.

~~~
Finster
Nortel? Or Novell? I guess both apply, but Novell seems to fit much better.

~~~
ywgdana
He likely means Nortel, especially in the sense of it being the Canadian tech
darling that fritters away its business into irrelevancy.

------
tareqak
Press results from BB: [http://press.blackberry.com/financial/2013/blackberry-
announ...](http://press.blackberry.com/financial/2013/blackberry-announces-
preliminary-second-quarter-fiscal-2014-resu.html)

------
mkr-hn
Relevant Google Trends chart:
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+wi...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+windows+phone%2C+ios%2C+blackberry#q=google%20android%2C%20windows%20phone%2C%20ios%2C%20blackberry&cmpt=q)

Blackberry's slide starts around October 2011. News search is a little more
flat, but that probably reflects the fact that tech journalists like to
compare the rise of one thing to the fall of another. Google search reflects
what people are looking for in general, so it covers people looking up
information on the phone and OS, not just news.

Oddly, Blackberry is still in the lead on image and shopping search. It was
tied with iOS on youtube until recently.

~~~
corresation
Why "Google Android" instead of just "Android" (or alternately you could, I
suppose, go with "Apple iOS"), because the latter much more closely mirrors
what has happened in the market. Unless personal assistant robots have taken
off corresponding with Android, I don't think it's being polluted much.

~~~
mitchty
There is also cisco ios, which would also feature heavily on the web I would
imagine.

~~~
mkr-hn
I doubt enough people are searching for information on an enterprise
networking operating system to overwhelm the volume of people searching for
information on a major consumer mobile operating system.

~~~
mitchty
True, but its more in line with ios the operating system.

------
FrankenPC
Queue "bye bye Blackberry". They milked their corporate entrenched position
for an admirable duration of time.

------
FkZ
Now where will I have to go for a keyboard and an OS not by Google?

------
codeoclock
So is this it then? They're finally gone?

------
pearjuice
It will all be over, soon.

------
programminggeek
Inventory kills hardware companies.

------
contextual
It just occurred to me that BlackBerry is playing a brilliant strategy. This
billion dollar writedown lowers the stocks so it can be taken private.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry announces the flagship Z30 to get users excited.

Z10 hasn't been out that long, and already they're writing off stock? And Z10
is such an awesome phone, anyone who actually uses one loves it.

It could only be for one reason, to take the company private asap.

I expect announcement of a sale soon.

