Blackberry a euphemism for the Dodo Bird

The world biggest secret is out. RIM has lost $125 million.They are going to focus on their corporate customers, Microsoft have decided exactly the opposite. Interesting times ahead, but having used a blackberry, I cannot see how that ever was successful.

@vesuvius:Because before the managers started bringing their own devices to work, it was in the hands of IT. And IT likes control, so the BlackBerry was the ultimate form of control, own server with managed devices.

Later they moved into the consumer market and became very popular because it was the elite corporate manager's device, wich you wanted as a worker drone.

Once the managers started bringing other devices, like the iPhone, to work, BlackBerry lost it's appeal. It became a workerdrone device, instead of an elite status symbol.

That's what I think anyway.

@Maddus Mattus:Bingo. Blackberries lost their cool factor once Apple expanded the smartphone market.

There are, of course, all kinds of business environments. For an every day office worker just using corporate email or web apps, whatever --iPhone and Android are fine in those businesses and if I were doing IT for one of them, I wouldn't spend a lot of time caring about what device they use. Sure, it's about control, but that control is unlikely to be coming from IT at any run of the mill office environment. Honestly, the less they have to care the better. If I can get away with just turning on secure IMAP, yipee. IT implements management decisions.

The control over mobile devices comes in more specialized environments and usually from management and not IT and for all kinds of different reasons. "Remote wipe" is not the only thing businesses want. They may want to monitor and restrict Internet access on corporate supplied mobile devices. They might want to restrict the transmission of company information. Blackberry has proven already that it can handle that and other business requirements and the others are still late to the show, if at all. 

If Blackberry takes what they"be learned from the consumer smartphone market and applies their business needs expertise to those ideas, I'm pretty sure they can make a comeback business side.

1 hour ago, Craig_Matthews wrote

If Blackberry takes what they"be learned from the consumer smartphone market and applies their business needs expertise to those ideas, I'm pretty sure they can make a comeback business side.

Or someone else can take that perceived niche and provide the same benefit along with the appearance of a growing company rather than a collapsing company, or at minimum a stable company that's not going bleeding money like Moby Dick. Someone like Microsoft maybe. 

All this supposes that the wonks believe that there is even a market niche there to be had... I personally think that the IRON CLAD control factor not as important to the vast majority of business today which in part has led to the demise of RIM and their once dominant market position...

My wife loves her blackberry.  For work contacts it is a great device,no distractions just great comms.  They are right to focus on the business market imo.

@harlock123: RIM owns an impressive stack of patents, so taking over their niche replicating their functionality may be impractical.

Yet, considering the amount of market share they are bleeding, that IP might be on the market real soon. Or the whole company, whichever comes cheaper. Interesting times ahead...

Blackberry became the symbol for the old and clueless in work places across America.

People buy iPhones because they like what it says about them. I was at a business conference the other day and the speaker asked who had an iPhone by a show of hands and every single person practically in a 400 person audience raised their hands. They weren't just saying they had one either, most of them actually had the phone in the hand they raised.

People today are scared of not being a card carrying iPhone user. They are scared of what it would say about them if they didn't have one. 

My main phone is an Android device, so I did not raise my hand. I have been using Android since day one when the G1 was released by T-Mobile.

21 hours ago, Blue Ink wrote

RIM owns an impressive stack of patents, so taking over their niche replicating their functionality may be impractical.

Yet, considering the amount of market share they are bleeding, that IP might be on the market real soon. Or the whole company, whichever comes cheaper. Interesting times ahead...

Wouldn't be the first time a floundering concern was bought at fire sale prices, cherry picked, and the rest of the corpse dumped in a landfill...

@harlock123:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-29/aol-inc-s-patent-sale-may-yield-290-million.html

AOL is next. They bought Huffington Post for $315M, so their whole company's tech for the past 25 years is worth less than the last gadget they bought. They bought Bebo for 1B with absolutely no valuable tech what so ever and sold it back for 30M losing 99% of their investment too proving that internet mind share is totally worthless in actual dollar value.

I don't think RIM will end much differently than Palm.

vesuvius wrote

They are going to focus on their corporate customers...

"RIM is Sticking With Consumer Hardware -- For Now

As with much of its recent troubles, RIM's announcement of examining new directions was marred by poor delivery and confusion.  MSNBC and others initially released reports that made it sound as if RIM had committed to a complete pullout from the consumer market (think HP's webOS).  Actually, RIM merely had decided to "refocus" on its core enterprise business, although consumer sales will continue."

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=24361

Weren't they already focusing on corporate business customers all along? Like, how is that refocusing when they have never change their focus in the first place? Call me ignorant or what not, but, I have never consider RIM having interest in casual market. Arguably my perception is false, but, I am certain that's how the world views it. So, making that statement, IMO, it is just saying, "we are not changing anything".

I think this is the same thing as IBM stay with big businesses while Microsoft took over home computing, and in term, MS took vary large chunk of business market. Obviously if you treat it as a similar case, you know the outcome. Although IBM is way way way bigger than RIM.

1 hour ago, magicalclick wrote

Call me ignorant or what not, but, I have never consider RIM having interest in casual market.

BBM is clearly aimed at teenagers and not corporate execs, as was most of their advertising this year.

Nokia used to make boots (foot wear) before they started making phones.

Today, only Apple and RIM make their own phones where they also own the OS that runs on them.

Nokia used to have Symbian, but are now using Microsoft.

RIM, with their BNX OS, renamed to 10, is a phone and a tablet OS. Computing technology is going to continue to improve at about the same exponential rate as it has been for the last 40 years, for perhaps another 20 years. RIM can compete because they have a lot of patents, or IP. The world changes and no one can predict the future. And where I am going with this I have no idea

8 hours ago, evildictaitor wrote

*snip*

BBM is clearly aimed at teenagers and not corporate execs, as was most of their advertising this year.

You may be correct, because the only TV advert I've seen in the US has been a weak attempt at urban hipster marketing, but in the US, they are culturally associated with business douchery.

I'm making an assumption that you are located in the UK, however, where BBM is rather popular with the hipster crowd or whatever equivalent exists over there.

8 minutes ago, ScanIAm wrote

*snip*

You may be correct, because the only TV advert I've seen in the US has been a weak attempt at urban hipster marketing, but in the US, the are culturally associated with business douchery.

I'm making an assumption that you are located in the UK, however, where BBM is rather popular with the hipster crowd or whatever equivalent exists over there.

I doubt there is a difference in UK. Another ignorant comment and likely to be false arguably. But, if they actually gained enough traction in the same iPhone market, I do not believe they would want to throw that away. Any sane person would hope to bring the same success over sea, IFF there is a success. So, I assume their casual presence in UK is as weak as in US.

5 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

*snip*

Another ignorant comment and likely to be false arguably.

Actually, I think your comment is ignorant and likely to be false arguably. BBM was used more than facebook in the London Riots:

http://mashable.com/2011/08/08/london-riots-blackberry-messenger/

And the riots were mainly done by young people:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/14443623

And hence I can conclude that, at least during the summer of last year, BBM was pretty popular amongst da' yoof.

@evildictaitor:

I need something more concrete, sorry. Because I wouldn't use Facebook or Tweeter on my WP7 if I am in such event where time is the essence. Well, WP7's FB integration is fast, but, the contact/birthday spam to my hotmail account is a major turn off.

But, you see my point right? The data is not representative because Facebook or Tweeter is not "Instant Messenger", and that's very true for non-WP7 phones.

Of course, I am nip-picking as defense mechanism. You are likely right and I am surprised why they would want to refocus on corporate market if they managed to be successful in hipster market.