Could Blackberry have survived by...going low end?

[desura]

Just a hunch I have...but BB never stood a chance vs iOS or Android, and yet they tried and spent a lot of R&D money.

What if they had focused on bringing their product to the low end? Could it have worked out? Like, build a number of cheap text messaging flip phones with these origami hardware designs.

 

[AViking]

That depends. Do corporate Americans want low end phones? I used a blackberry for years and the company replaced them with iphones. We didn't want low end phones. We wanted phones that could keep us organized and have instant access to email and internet. The BB was too slow to update and got passed by the iphone and then android.

Now in Africa many use blackberries and I'm sure that's true in other parts of the world too. Maybe low end phones would work there. Not sure.

 

[Eug]

Going totally low end would have killed Blackberry even faster IMO.

Blackberry DID stand a chance against both iOS and Android, because they preceded them by quite a bit. The problem with Blackberry is they just assumed their model was correct, and when rumours surfaced that Apple would produce a touchscreen slab phone with no buttons, they just laughed. And then they said even if it could be done, the product would suck because of battery life issues, etc.

Then Apple released the iPhone and caught them totally off guard, and then AFTER that Blackberry got serious about it, but by that time they were too late, because this stuff takes years to develop.

Reports are that BB10 is actually pretty decent, but it was simply several years too late. If they had put their resources into this years prior, then they could be a big competitor.

BTW, whenever I picked up a Blackberry in the early 2000s, I always thought it sucked. It just floored me that they couldn't come up with something better... and nobody else could either, because it didn't take a UI designer to realize that the UI need some serious updating. Mind you I was looking at it as a consumer, but it seemed like the consumer market was almost an afterthought for them. They were far too wrapped up in only the corporate market, and then threw out a few crappy consumer market to see what stuck.

 

[TerryMathews]

Just a hunch I have...but BB never stood a chance vs iOS or Android, and yet they tried and spent a lot of R&D money.

What if they had focused on bringing their product to the low end? Could it have worked out? Like, build a number of cheap text messaging flip phones with these origami hardware designs.

BlackBerry was a flawed business model the minute that Google and Apple and Microsoft started giving away for free what RIM was selling (access to corporate email via Exchange).

Sure there's a difference between BBM and EAS, but the gap is shrinking and not really relevant unless you have someone with sensitive data in their email/calendar.

 

[bearxor]

BB could have survived, and still CAN survive, by partnering with the OS makers and the handset makers to integrate their technology in to devices others sell.

It's time to transition from a full service company to one that just specializes in services. Time to put the hardware to rest.

Work with Samsung to make a device that incorporates your security features and is 100% compatible with the Android ecosystem. Make your money off selling licenses for the BES server and MDM. Partner with Apple to incorporate a secure BB partition on the iPhone so that companies can manage those devices better and provide secure email.

The popularity of Good in recent years is more a testament to BlackBerry's complete failure than their actual failure is.

 

[RandomFool]

Doubtful, people who had BBs wanted more features not less. I think BB's reliance on it's own OS killed it. If the new BB OS was built on Android would have been a good choice for them. They could continue to make nice phones and put their services on them and get the advantage of a large app store.

 

[Red Storm]

It took them years to finally respond to Android and iOS, that was the epic fail that sealed their fate.

 

[PowerYoga]

because of battery life issues, etc.

Well, they weren't wrong on that. Blackberries have the longest battery life out of any phone I've ever used. I could talk for 8 hours on that, forget to charge it, then talk for another 8 the next day.

 

[Red Storm]

Well, they weren't wrong on that. Blackberries have the longest battery life out of any phone I've ever used. I could talk for 8 hours on that, forget to charge it, then talk for another 8 the next day.

Talk time is not impressive, many smartphones can do that for hours on end, especially Moto phones.

 

[PowerYoga]

Talk time is not impressive, many smartphones can do that for hours on end, especially Moto phones.

Eh, try to have an all day conference call on any smart phone without plugging it in. You'll be out by hour 5 or 6. With the blackberry I've had 9-10+ hours of talk time and still have enough battery to last for the rest of the night with me checking e-mails and replying to crap. Don't think even a maxx can talk for that long.

 

[Red Storm]

A Maxx could definitely do it. The LG G2 has measured talk time of nearly 24 hours according to AT.

 

[Eug]

BTW it was interesting watching the migration at my workplace.

My workplace refused to allow anything but Blackberries. Well, my workplace has a lot of employees that are high-paid and well-connected, and they wanted iPhones. The IT department still refused. So, the employees just started buying iPhones themselves and using them anyway.

A year or two later, the IT department gave in and started supporting iPhones, and then a little while later started supporting Android too. Blackberry is still supported, but nobody is using it.

Eh, try to have an all day conference call on any smart phone without plugging it in. You'll be out by hour 5 or 6. With the blackberry I've had 9-10+ hours of talk time and still have enough battery to last for the rest of the night with me checking e-mails and replying to crap. Don't think even a maxx can talk for that long.

Maybe, maybe not, but when the phone sucks that bad in the first place for everything else, people are willing to cut a better iPhone some slack in terms of battery life. Plus, if you KNOW you'll be in a conference call for that long, you plug it anyway. Or at least that is what I used to do with my candy bar phones when possible, and those lasted as long or longer than Blackberries.

 

[silverpig]

IMO blackberry's cash cow is in service revenue. There are a few things I'd probably be willing to pay $5/mo for on top of my wireless bill that BB could provide.

 

[Eug]

IMO blackberry's cash cow is in service revenue. There are a few things I'd probably be willing to pay $5/mo for on top of my wireless bill that BB could provide.

Like what?

I've personally never understood the affection for Blackberry, as a non-corporate customer.

 

[desura]

IMO blackberry's cash cow is in service revenue. There are a few things I'd probably be willing to pay $5/mo for on top of my wireless bill that BB could provide.

Um, isn't it just email? How is it different or better than what an iphone can do?

 

[desura]

I mean,

edit: okay, youtube links don't seem to work here, but if you just look up iphone vs blackberry you can find a vid.

Kind of obvious watching that that blackberry never stood a chance vs the iphone.

The only way I could see them surviving vs the iphone would be some integration of SMS and email, for cheapskates who don't want/need mobile data but want to have the chat functionality -- dumbphones. And on top of that, releasing iOS and android clients...

 

[poofyhairguy]

It's time to transition from a full service company to one that just specializes in services. Time to put the hardware to rest.

This is true, but the problem is a software BB is a fourth the company a hardware one is. Better to sell off and let someone else do it with the pieces.


I will always believe that if BB would have dumped their OS AND consumers and starting making "Business Class" Android phones in 2011 or so they would be making big money now. No one catered to businesses like them in the Android world. Samsung is trying to, but it conflicts with their consumer-happy brand. BB is and always was as fun as a block of wood.

 

[Eug]

That would have been a hard pill to swallow. Plus Android's forte is taking people's private info, and BB's forte is hiding people's private info.

 

[bearxor]

Any BlackBerry integration is going to have to go deeper than an "app".

 

[PowerYoga]

A Maxx could definitely do it. The LG G2 has measured talk time of nearly 24 hours according to AT.

That's good to know. I've never seen anybody with one so I couldn't tell.

Maybe, maybe not, but when the phone sucks that bad in the first place for everything else, people are willing to cut a better iPhone some slack in terms of battery life. Plus, if you KNOW you'll be in a conference call for that long, you plug it anyway. Or at least that is what I used to do with my candy bar phones when possible, and those lasted as long or longer than Blackberries.

Oh I won't pretend that BB phones were good, they are terrible. The only thing that impressed me about them is the battery life and talk time, which is why I brought that up. If any other phones remotely came close to that talk time (which apparently they did) then blackberry has no game.

And generally when I did use the blackberry, it would be one conference call and then one support call then another tech call and status call and etc etc... generally they tend to run into each other and sometimes I'd have to do it where I won't have a good place to charge the phone, or having to use the phone all day and then having to run to the airport. It was nice to have something that was reliably juiced enough for you to not worry about running out of batteries.

 

[Ravynmagi]

The idea of cheaper Blackberries crossed my mind at one point. I bought a $100 Lumia 521 on a whim because it was so cheap and I wanted to check out Windows Phone 8. And I pretty much only buy phones off contract now, so I love my $350 Nexus phones.

Then I remembered most people buy phones on contract, they are already used to paying little for their phones. So cheaper Blackberries probably wouldn't help at all. It's hard for phones to compete with each other on price when they are almost all the same price on contract. Probably why everything is still so freaking expensive off contract.

Blackberry is run by idiots with their head in the sand. They were doomed for a long time now.

 

[desura]

That depends. Do corporate Americans want low end phones? I used a blackberry for years and the company replaced them with iphones. We didn't want low end phones. We wanted phones that could keep us organized and have instant access to email and internet. The BB was too slow to update and got passed by the iphone and then android.

Now in Africa many use blackberries and I'm sure that's true in other parts of the world too. Maybe low end phones would work there. Not sure.

If anything, corporate America is slow to change, and BB could probably have held onto them by focusing double-time on rock-solid support, and likely also providing iOS and android apps to keep them in BB world.

I like the post that said if they had made a business-focused android phone they could have done well. Manufacturers customize android all the time-- just look at nook and kindle. Heck, kindle's default search engine is Bing of all things -- they've pretty much stolen from google in that regard.

 

[Imp]

That depends. Do corporate Americans want low end phones? I used a blackberry for years and the company replaced them with iphones. We didn't want low end phones. We wanted phones that could keep us organized and have instant access to email and internet. The BB was too slow to update and got passed by the iphone and then android.

Now in Africa many use blackberries and I'm sure that's true in other parts of the world too. Maybe low end phones would work there. Not sure.

More importantly, does corporate America want phones perceived as low end, out of date, and from a failed company?

Considering that corporate America and the "business world" is so concerned about appearance and perception...

 

[gsaldivar]

They would have ended up just like Palm did. A faded company married to old platform, constantly repackaging and reselling the same product, trying to rekindle the same excitement they enjoyed when their competition was still trying to figure out what to do next.

 

[BladeVenom]

I agree with everyone else who's said going low end wouldn't work for Blackberry.

Their best shot may have been going Android early and selling their services to everyone.