RIM CEO Says Company 'Seriously' Considered Switch To Android 283
zacharye writes "RIM CEO Thorsten Heins's interview with the Telegraph on Thursday made headlines for his admission that the company can't keep up with Apple and Samsung without outside help. But there's another interesting nugget buried within the interview that didn't get quite as much attention: Heins says that RIM took a long, hard look at migrating to Android before deciding to plow forward with BlackBerry 10. Heins said, 'We took the conscious decision not to go Android. If you look at other suppliers’ ability to differentiate, there’s very little wiggle room. We looked at it seriously — but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base: it’s all about getting stuff done. Games, media, we have to be good at it, but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content — if you stay true to that purpose you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can’t do it on a me-too approach.'"
That *niche* market. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blackberry could have survived as the business market's option. The security they once offered was unmatched.
But now we even see RIM migrating away from what little they are good at by giving away their keys to oppressive governments in order to continue doing business in that country. RIM is feeding itself by cutting off its own appendages.
I don't think Android is going to catch on in the business world. We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower. (The nuances in that discussion don't matter, the fact is that the market sees IOS as safer than Android. Perception is reality)
It's unfortunate that RIM decided to commit corporate suicide because the market has lost something that was once good. Consumers now have fewer choices, and that's bad.
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We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower.
Actually, what I can almost guarantee happened is that some executive with no technical background whatsoever said "I love my iPhone, it's so shiny!", and the bit about security and malware was made up to justify that.
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, the decision was made solely in IT by the desktop/device/network arch staff.
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Does android have a way to restrict what apps can be put on it yet? Ditto question with IOS.
Honest question, Im a huge RIM fan but would love to know if ActiveSync can be similarly locked down as thats where people are headed.
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The sounds a lot like having your own package repositories and excluding the vendor ones.
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Yes, it's called a mobile device management platform. There are a variety of options for both iOS and Android (often they support both). Personally I think the future is going to be Android VM's, you'll have a personal profile and a corporate profile, each with their own apps and data and they only thing they will share is the hardware. VMWare already has such a product but it only runs on a small handful of smartphones, I think eventually it will get added to stock Android.
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:4, Informative)
I hate to post this again but I feel obliged to correct misinformation. The Apple Configurator implements security policies and restricts features and apps. No server required.
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Interesting)
and iOS was found MORE secure?
Good luck with that...
I believe it. iOS might not be the best, but it's pretty good when you just want to get business done. It's easy to setup, easy to control, and Apple is pretty good at keeping people/Apps/permissions under control. Plus, every iPhone works pretty much the same regardless of model.
Some androids are easy to root, some are hard - some are easy to control, some are not. Some models are good, some aren't.
I personally like Android as a geek and and someone who isn't exactly pro-Apple - but I hated supporting Android and led the push for an easier iPhone/iPad environment. I'd never go back
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Good grief, man, a corporation can compile their entire own android stack from scratch and put quite precisely and exactly only the software that they want on the phone.
You can't do that with Apple or Microsoft.
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Because doing all that is easy?
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Informative)
I believe it. iOS might not be the best, but it's pretty good when you just want to get business done.
iOS devices are one of the most problematic devices that we have to support. These are some of the problems we have had with them:
1. The web proxy server settings are all centralised on the device, which is a really good design. Unfortunately, many (most?) iOS apps seem to ignore them.
2. Many apps don't support authenticated web proxies.
3. Of the apps that do support authenticated web proxies, most of them do their own authentication (i.e. you open the browser and get asked to authenticate and can then browse without any more problems... but then you go to another app and have to auth again because the browser and the other app don't share the same authentication credential store. Then you open another app and have to auth *again*.
4. The iCloud stuff can't handle HTTP errors it didn't expect. If the iOS device tries to contact the iCloud servers and the web proxy returns a 407 (not authorised), the device just blindly tries again immediately (without supplying any authentication credentials). On networks where our customers have decided to severely restrict internet access (we supply systems to schools, who often put up very restrictive controls on their internet connections at certain times of the day), we frequently see the iOS devices hammering away at the proxy with repeated attempts to contact Apple's servers; we're talking hundreds of requests per second for hours on end - the batteries on these dumb devices can't last long with that kind of behaviour.
Notably, Apple seems to have a general habit of many of these things - much of their OS X software also has terrible support for authenticated web proxies, and iChat has a well known bug similar to (4) that results in it fighting with remote XMPP clients if they return a (legal) response it doesn't like - I tend to see constant network traffic totalling about 3Kbps per paid of fighting clients, and they do it even when not in a conversation.
Some models are good, some aren't.
Well, what is "good" often depends on what use you want to put it to. I can point at a lot of devices (running any of the OSes), which I regard as "not good", whilst other people will regard them as "good" because they happen to fit with their usage best. This is the benefit of choice, and is something you don't get with the iOS devices.
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Basically, all that can be cut down to "Bad support for authenticated proxies". Maybe you need to re-evaluate why you need that proxy in the first place. It's not like a non-transparent proxy adds any real value over transparent proxies, and if you want to filter out people from your network, just use 802.1X.
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Insightful)
and iOS was found MORE secure?
Good luck with that...
Elaborate. Elaborate precisely.
<necessary preemptive strike against slashdot fanbois>
And no. I'm not an iPhone fanboi. I'm actually an Android user.
</necessary preemptive strike against slashdot fanbois>
Geek, nerds, technocrats, whatever, they should be able to make statements like this immediately followed by a list comparing both platforms, followed by the most objective conclusion possible. Anything else is just hand-waving bull-crap more appropriate for technically-challenged marketing types than for the supposedly tech-oriented crowd that comes to these interweebz realms.
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone who is better at wordsmithing than I please come up with a meme that says we would all appreciate it if you only post when you actually know something about the subject?
Sorry to get off topic, but in the past year it seems that the people who post here are more armchair quarterbacks than actually in the field with something intelligent to add. Is this the Reddit crowd coming over here?
If you have something to add, please do so, but try to include some facts with the post instead of just "IOS is more secure" or "Good luck with that".
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only when you're the one holding the keys to the garden...
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As far as I know iOS is pretty secure.
as far as I know, finding an iOS exploit in the wild is one google search for "iOS jailbreak" away...
And there hasn't been a remote jailbreak exploit for iOS since a Zero Day for iOS 4. Every jailbreak since has required you to have USB access to the device
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I will also add:
It was once said, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".
Today, nobody ever gets fired for choosing Apple.
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I will also add:
It was once said, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".
Today, nobody ever gets fired for choosing Apple.
I dont know anyone in business who has chosen Apple for the enterprise so I am not sure how that applies. Consumer devices that they personally own and bring in, yes. I can't think of another scenario where people recommend Apple for servers or clients when its actually purchased by the business.
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I will also add:
It was once said, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".
Today, nobody ever gets fired for choosing Apple.
I dont know anyone in business who has chosen Apple for the enterprise so I am not sure how that applies. Consumer devices that they personally own and bring in, yes. I can't think of another scenario where people recommend Apple for servers or clients when its actually purchased by the business.
Easy, nobody chooses Apple for an entire enterprise, so nobody can get fired for doing it. Now choosing IOS as a standardized phone platform... well I suppose this is no more inappropriate than choosing Microsoft.
Besides it doesn't matter what platform you use for mobile, if the people setting it up are morons it will be insecure.
I can remember working a company when my manger rushed over to my desk in a panic, waving his blackberry in my face. "OMG, OMG, our internal development server is open to the publi
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We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower.
Actually, what I can almost guarantee happened is that some executive with no technical background whatsoever said "I love my iPhone, it's so shiny!", and the bit about security and malware was made up to justify that.
Who voted this informative?
Just about any IT professional.
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We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower.
Actually, what I can almost guarantee happened is that some executive with no technical background whatsoever said "I love my iPhone, it's so shiny!", and the bit about security and malware was made up to justify that.
Who voted this informative?
Sadly, the /. crowd who think mindless dilbertian generalizations and overly abused cliches constitute statements of truth.
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Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Informative)
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Blackberry could have survived as the business market's option. The security they once offered was unmatched.
IS unmatched. BES STILL has no real rival in terms of security; the second best uses SSL, which has widely reported problems and can be exploited by anyone with a root CA cert unless you take pains to remove all the default trusts from your devices. BES on the otherhand remains about as unhackable as you can be, using symetrical encryption with securely exchanged, privately held, per-device keys.
But now we even see RIM migrating away from what little they are good at by giving away their keys to oppressive governments in order to continue doing business in that country. RIM is feeding itself by cutting off its own appendages.
Youre buying into the ignorantly published FUD. RIM gave away BIS keys; they do not and never will have access
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Almost every company I know of has standardized to android recently. The wide range of price points for their devices is a big drawing factor and with a proper MDM and/or google apps infrastructure they are far more secure than iPhones.
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Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Informative)
Bull. The very fact that RIM CAN give away the keys to governments (or whoever they like) means their security wasn't very good.
You don't know what you are talking about.
They gave away the keys to BIS. That's the service they HOST THEMSELVES used mostly by individuals and small companies who don't want to host their own server. Of course they have the keys for it.
BES (blackberry enterprise server) is the enterprise service. Enterprises run their own BES on their own hardware under their own control. RIM doesn't touch it. RIM hasn't (and can't) give away the BES keys because the enterprise has them not RIM.
But complaining about RIM having the keys to BIS is as foolish as complaining google has access to the encryption keys to https://www.gmail.com/ [gmail.com]
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I think the point he's making is that the channels aren't "double blind"; e.g. like a hashed-salted password.
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I think the point he's making is that the channels aren't "double blind"; e.g. like a hashed-salted password.
I don't think your password example really fits, but I get your point.
But he criticised BIS with the phrase "their security isn't very good" while suggesting SSL enabled SMTP/IMAP is "far superior". That is plainly ignorant or dishonest.
Encrypted IMAP/SMTP certainly isn't "double blind". And unless you are self hosting the mail server, and only send to recipients on that mail server it has FAR FAR mo
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Oh that's fine then, given that covers the majority of users ( non-corporate ) and the most innovative small companies.
Again, this is no different or worse than any other hosted service.
If you are using hosted exchange, your host has the keys. If you are using hosted encrypted IMAP your host has the keys. If you run everything through a VPN host, your VPN host has the keys.
Do you honestly not see that as a problem?
No, if you truly care about security you self host, because everyone knows that if you use a h
Re:That *niche* market. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Blackberry system ranges from not very secure at all to almost as good as you could get making your own.
We talking BES or are we talking BIS?
BES
The base security model is as good as anything you can do rolling your own server using proprietary software. But the handset management and controls are unmatched. iphone or android + some linux server at the backend with SSL enabled isn't even in the same league. Sure they both do end-to-end email encryption, but that's about where the comparison ends. You cannot lock down and manage ios (or android) to anywhere near the same degree, unless your 'make your own' includes providing your own secure managed handset operating system... Android could be the basis for one but to my knowledge the 'community' has so far only focussed more on defeating carrier restrictions to open the platform up, not to deliver enhanced security and IT policy controls. You can't compare BB/BES to a theoretical open source handset OS that doesn't actually exist. Thus: BES is unmatched.
BIS
BIS is better than what you can accomplish with other handsets using a hosted 3rd party solution. The security is just as good as any other hosted solution -- but any two unrelated BIS users can communicate securely with no coordination.
If your a drug dealer, how do you communicate securely with your contacts? Do you setup a linux server with SSL and then setup accounts for all your customers and distributors?... And run a help desk to provide them support when they have trouble sending messages?
BIS gave them all that. Admittedly as a hosted service it was always known that RIM in Canada had the keys... and you had to trust them. And kudos to RIM for holding out as long as it did. And by making this a very public argument, RIM may ultimately have given keys to india, but at least the consumers aren't being decieved. Unlike say the secret NSA closet at your local ISP.
it's called selective ignorance (Score:2)
They chose ignorance. The choice was adopt or die. That decision needed to be made almost 10 years ago. Goodbye, RIMjobs. It's proof that the executive management is a complete and utter failure as a whole.
Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
You failed as CEO. Google gives you all apps for multimedia, so you don't have to do anything there. But they give you 0 enterprise apps, so that is what you could have done. Its not like corporations are going to pirate your apps and risk being sued.
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Re:Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an enterprise app like Google Apps is enterprise-ready... You can use it for "Enterprise-like" features but do Enterprises truly use it exclusively? Hell no.
All RIM would have needed to do was make a suite of apps that look like the old apps they had before (not hard since Android apps don't have hard and fast style rules) and then build a management backend that looked like what they had before, so that admins wouldn't have a huge learning curve when going to a BB/Android hybrid.
Fear of change is what RIM was banking on, by deciding to do things the way they always had and shunning any alternative. For decision makers that fear is quickly going extinct; today if you don't embrace change then you (like RIM) go extinct instead. That was their downfall, they put all their chips in the "lets just not change" category and didn't realize that change is absolutely inevitable. If they had walked the line, catered to those who still had a preference for the old BB style while allowing change to happen organically, they would have had a niche. As of now, their niche is solely organizations who haven't woken up to change (and those companies are either going to wake up or go out of business. Not a good spot to find yourself.
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Yes, this is exactly true. They could've taken the Android platform and ran in their own direction with it. They lacked imagination, or perhaps misunderstood the purpose and power of Open Source. That's what they should've done.
And you're right, when it comes to apps for doing stuff at work, Android isn't that great right now.
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That's a lot of future talk.
will be
going to
in a few years
will expose
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Not to mention the spellcheck feature on his BlackBerry is seriously lacking... THAT'S going to be better in BB10 too!
Re:Seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
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All the new phones are coming out with Android 4.x
Except Samsung who pushed out the new Rugby and the Captivate Glide with 2.3 for some inscrutable reason.
And you were wrong and are now changing course? (Score:5, Funny)
This is the space left for where you admit your error and announce a switch to android.
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The content of this space is why you're going out of business. We all understand that it would be very very hard to be competitive against samsung and HTC and so on. But blackberry is now next to irrelevant in the marketplace. And RIM needs a rapid change in direction. Hell, jumping on windows phone 8 is a better plan than clinging to blackberry 10.
Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course? (Score:5, Insightful)
And RIM needs a rapid change in direction
I disagree.
There's nothing they can do at this point to recover. I use to like blackberry, but your right and now they're just completely irrelevant. To think four years ago Barack Obama was angry because he was told he would have to give up his blackberry after being elected.
P.S.
I'm Canadian and nigher for or against Obama. I only mentioned him because I remember reading the news articles discussing his blackberry issue during the last US Presidential election.
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I'm not too far from Waterloo, at a university and a few years ago RIM gave us a bunch of phones to do development on. At that time the iPhone 3g was about a year old in canada, and when we walked into the classroom and said 'this years project is on Blackberry' we got a giant groan from the class. Lots of kids still had blackberries. But they saw the winds of change.
This last year we were doing a project on one or both of iphone and android (or BB if they wanted). And in a class of 35 computer scientis
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I'm Canadian and nigher for or against Obama.
what a great world we live in, where people have to announce their non-opinion of the US president lest they be raked over the coals when people interpret their comments and pro or con.
Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then new salespeople came on board with their own iPhones and Androids and we resisted... then executives started switching to iPhones/Androids and wanted us to set them up. You don't tell them "no". We just released an official internal how-to for setting up iPhones although it won't be supported for everyone until the Exchange 2010 upgrade is complete.
There are few reasons to consider BlackBerry now. A few things don't work as expected, for instance accepting a meeting request on either iPhone / Android doesn't result in a response to the sender for some reason (using Exchange 2003 anyway). This may all be fixed once Exchange 2010 is in place.
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The thing is, youll note that for the most part it isnt IT people saying "theres something wrong with BES; we need to move to IOS". Its that the employees over the last few years have gotten more leeway, and have started moving to entertainment devices with ActiveSync.
Im not convinced that RIM did something wrong by sticking to what it remains phenomenally good at, except that they did not see and react to this new phenomenon fast enough.
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And RIM needs a rapid change in direction.
Agreed.
Hell, jumping on windows phone 8 is a better plan than clinging to blackberry 10
Wait, what? It's a completely new OS for phones, and that's not a change in direction?
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I mean switching to windows phone 8 would be a better plan than their current one, even though windows phone 8 doesn't seem all that likely to succeed. Blackberry 10 is dead before it arrives because it's the wrong strategy. Windows phone 8 will at least have microsoft flinging money around for a while. That was the joke.
Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like people who buy or hold RIM stock? (https://www.google.ca/finance?q=TSE%3ARIM) that's down what, 75% in 12 months. The people who turfed out the founders and CEO?
The new CEO who's pleading for time with investors? Or the same CEO who realizing how much trouble they are in has had to come out and explain why they didn't go the most obvious route to try and make money? (I will point out that the RIM founders had a completely different plan, that would have moved RIM almost entirely into the infrastructure side of the business and exited the consumer products section).
gorwing cash horde.
I think you mean shrinking. As of their Q1 2013 filing (which was just over a month ago) their GAAP was a 520 million dollar loss. Momentum in spite of the iphone got them to 6 months ago. And suddenly they've started to hit a brick wall. Nokia is in essentially the same boat, they had momentum in the sales channel, but no one actually wanted the new product (BB9 or WP7) so when they ran out of stuff people did want they basically hit a fiscal cliff.
Importantly, the difference between RIM and Nokia is that Nokia *might* have a product people will want to buy 12 months from now, and can plead for cash from microsoft. RIM has nothing that people want, and no one to beg for money from.
Huh? (Score:2)
amazon e-ink kindle and google nexus phone are both android based.
They couldn't be more different!
"no wiggle room" what is he talking about???
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
it's all GPL so you can use as much or as little of it as you want
You're a little off there. The kernel and other Linux bits are GPL. The Android stuff is under the Apache license [wikipedia.org].
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does that invalidate my assertion that you can use as much or as little of it as you want?
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No, just clarifying.
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who said anything about what it is called?
they can call it whatever they want to.
if they are trying to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crowd then they are probably better off NOT using the "andrioid" name.
Book Kindle (Score:2)
" If you like to read novels, nothing beets e-ink because its easy on your eyes and on the battery.
Personally paper + ink beats it all day, every day. No batteries needed and they can last for centuries.
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paper and ink lasts for centuries? It won't last the wash cycle in my jeans
Uh huh... (Score:2)
Heins says that RIM took a long, hard look at migrating to Android before deciding to plow forward with BlackBerry 10.
And that's definitely, 100%, without a doubt, not an attempt to draw psychological attention and curiosity toward BlackBerry 10 being better than Android OS to drive sales up. Definitely not.
</snark>
RIM should hang in there... (Score:5, Insightful)
The last thing the market needs is a choice between only 2 platforms for smartphones. Yes, I know that Windows Mobile is still out there as is Symbian, but because Microsoft took entirely too long to bring Windows Mobile 7 to market and Nokia really didn't push Symbian as hard as they could have (i.e getting a major player like HTC or Samsung to build Symbian based phones early in the game) they're both pretty much niche players now instead of the former powerhouse enterprise/business players they once were. At one point, when you said "Smartphone", you could only have been referring to a Blackberry, Palm, or Windows Mobile/PocketPC based phone with Symbian being the underdog. Even after June 29, 2007, when the iPhone was released, these were still considered to be true smartphones by many in business with the iPhone being the poseur.
Palm is gone, RIM is facing tough times, and Symbian is nearly extinct. Windows Mobile 7 is not even a part of the public consciousness even though there is still plenty of advertising for it. This is sad since there's plenty of enterprise users out there that don't need/want "Robot Unicorn Attack" or "iApp For More Stupidity" alongside their messaging services.
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unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful (Score:2)
I had already started a scathing rebuttal until I read this:
"Hell... a monopoly is great thing..."
no mutton for you this day troll...
I didn't say anything about selling phones (Score:2)
... Only what people classified as a real "Smartphone". Around the offices I've worked in, the default was either a BB, PalmOS, or Windows Mobile device. Symbian is great, but in the US market, you'll get more "what's that?" responses than you will actual people that know what it is. Honestly, the only Symbian phone I can remember being sold stateside is the old Nokia N-Gage, but I'm well aware of the platform and it's capabilities (even having seen an unlocked Nokia E5 in use by a former colleague, he gush
Interesting quote (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFA, Heins remarks:
"there’s a very stable, slowly growing base of physical keyboard users and most of them are really highly ranked officers"
So, he points out that the keyboard users are the demographic with the least growth potential AND the least staying potential, and he thinks that's a positive?
Translation... (Score:2, Interesting)
Translation: "It's all about checking your email and thinking that no other phone can do that".
Seriously, I've never understood the Blackberry kool-aid. 6-7 years ago, Blackberry people were running around going "Ooh, yeah... I can check my email wherever I am!". Meanwhile, I was on my Palm Treo, checking email, browsing the web, SSH-ing into my servers, playing RPG's, getting turn-by-turn nav
BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe more (Score:5, Informative)
It is possible, however, by rooting the Playbook, to open it up to full GAPPS capability, including the Google Play Store. RIMM needs to do this for BB10...and then they need to promote the hell out of this capability, saying, "BlackBerry runs all your favorite Android apps...and runs them better!" (Which is true; the QNX kernel of BB10 is far more efficient in an embedded environment than Android's Linux kernel is. This translates into increased battery life.) Karl Denninger has argued [market-ticker.org] that this is the only way for RIMM to avoid complete irrelevance in the marketplace...and the company's performance since he wrote that piece in March seems to bear that out.
They could go further, too. One enterprising hacker has gotten (some) unmodified iOS apps to run on the Playbook [crackberry.com]. And it's perfectly legal, because the developer has just created his own implementations of relevant Apple APIs, and, under the ruling in Oracle v. Google, APIs are not copyrightable and Apple can't stop him. RIMM should acquire or license this technology and extend it to work with more iOS apps, and promote the hell out of this capability, too. Imagine being able to run virtually any popular smart phone app on one phone...with better battery life than either Android phones or the iPhone. (QNX beats the iOS Darwin kernel for efficiency, too.)
If RIMM does these two things, they could go from zero to hero in one fell swoop. If they fail to do either one...well, next stop is probably a bankruptcy court.
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Soon, the only reasonable asset they'll have left will be their patent portfolio...and the best way for one of the other players to acquire that will be to wait and buy it from the bankruptcy judge.
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(Which is true; the QNX kernel of BB10 is far more efficient in an embedded environment than Android's Linux kernel is. This translates into increased battery life.)
Yeah that's why the Kindle Fire despite being very similar hardware to the Playbook and the Fire having a grossly overloaded interface gets better battery life than the Playbook. Where's the "efficiency" going? Calculating fractals in the background?
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However, since they won't even take the far-easier step of opening BB10 up to GAPPS...draw your own conclusions.
Do, or do-not (Score:2)
There is no "try"
The price the phone to the users (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're building a phone for executives ONLY, then make it a $1000 phone. These are people who drive 911's, M5's, Ferrari, or some other similarly high-end car. If these are the people willing to spend $300,000 for a top-of-the-line supercar, then they certainly should be willing to shell out $1 to 2 thousand for a phone. But it better be the best damn phone there is.
I mean, if you're paying 2k for a phone, not only should it make the iPhone look like a cheap toy, it should make almost all high-tech items look like cheap toys.
But the problem is that Apple, Samsung and HTC are all making really, really good hardware, and selling it for $200 -- a tenth of the cost. And for all of RIM's wizardry, they aren't going to beat Apple.
So, the executive who is paying enormous sums of money for a car is going to look at the Blackberry, then look at the iPhone, and still decide that the iPhone is the better product, even though it's cheaper.
RIM needs to get their act together and make some really smart decisions. Unfortunately, they are not.
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If you're building a phone for executives ONLY, then make it a $1000 phone. These are people who drive 911's, M5's, Ferrari, or some other similarly high-end car. If these are the people willing to spend $300,000 for a top-of-the-line supercar, then they certainly should be willing to shell out $1 to 2 thousand for a phone. But it better be the best damn phone there is.
I mean, if you're paying 2k for a phone, not only should it make the iPhone look like a cheap toy, it should make almost all high-tech items look like cheap toys.
But the problem is that Apple, Samsung and HTC are all making really, really good hardware, and selling it for $200 -- a tenth of the cost. And for all of RIM's wizardry, they aren't going to beat Apple.
So, the executive who is paying enormous sums of money for a car is going to look at the Blackberry, then look at the iPhone, and still decide that the iPhone is the better product, even though it's cheaper.
RIM needs to get their act together and make some really smart decisions. Unfortunately, they are not.
A $1000 (or worse $2000) phone will be less capable than any iPhone or $500 Android since your sales will be in the hundreds of thousands, maybe low millions if you're lucky, versus the many millions of Android and iPhones sold.
The raw materials build a phone are a small part of the total costs -- estimates place the iPhone at around $200 for parts alone (of course, they can keep costs down by buying entire factory production runs). The biggest expense is the billions of dollars of R&D that goes into m
It's funny (Score:4, Insightful)
People talk about problems with android, and yet these problems are precisely where companies like RIM can differentiate themselves, by solving these problems.
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I think there's HUGE potential for a 3rd vendor. Don't treat your customers like they're in an involuntary Facebook profiling network like Google does and don't take on an authoritarian attitude like Apple does. But, the DOs are what's tough. iPhones are great because of the UI, not because fanboys are brainwashed. Android is great because of the openness of development. How you bring all that together isn't exactly easy.
He is righ about differentiating suppliers (Score:2)
If you look at other suppliers’ ability to differentiate, there’s very little wiggle room.
This is very true. Android device manufacturers can't figure out how to advertise their own devices. The ads often point out things like "The Droid Fooboo is a great social networking phone because it comes with the FaceBook app pre-installed" or "Videoconference with your family..." even though these are features available on any Android device. It also doesn't help that they release new phones every 3 - 6 months it confuses the market even more.
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android devices work great with keyboards
check out the new fangled "bluetooth" technology
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Handsets with keyboards, not handsets that let you bring your own laptop keyboard.
And the GP is right, for all of the talk about the freedom to "choose" in the Android ecosystem, the top of the line phones, the ones that are meant to meet the iPhone on performance, are all basically identical -- large screens, no keyboards, lotsa camera, AMOLED screen, removable battery, 4G. Candybar-format phones with hardware keyboards are also-rans running Eclair or Froyo,
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"ALL" basically identical
do you mean to say that?
there are NO exceptions?
The nice thing about android is that you don't have to get googles permission to use it in whatever form factor you want. With Apple you are stuck with their form factor and with Microsoft you have to meet their requirements.
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He didn't say that Android phones can't work with keyboards, he said that most Android phones that come with keyboards are not that great--a distinction which you seem to have missed.
He also that BB's users are going to expect a good phone with a good built-in keyboard--a point which you also seem to have missed.
But thanks for playing, anyway.
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"most Android phones that come with keyboards are not that great--a distinction which you seem to have missed."
So did RIM, they could have filled that market nicely with, as you say, no competition.
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How will that work when you've got an entire apps ecosystem based on the assumption that the phone has a large touchscreen? Only way I can think of is you make the phone with both a large touchscreen and a keyboard and you have the thing somehow open up, but then you usually wind up with something about the size and weight of a housebrick.
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Shame they don't seem to be keeping a keyboard phone in their lineup. There seemed to be talk of an HTC One Z - to follow on the naming convention and have a keyboard version of their latest phones - but it doesn't seem to have materialised.
I've got a normal Desire, but having migrated from a Palm Pre, just can't quite get used to the lack of a real keyboard. I was tempted by the Z at the time, but felt the writing was on the wall for keyboard phones and that I'd have to get to grips with touchscreen typing
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Wow you just described a great new business opportunity that RIM could have taken advantage of, if they had chosen android
just think of how many nice little android keyboard devices they could have sold with the market all to themselves.
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How will that work when you've got an entire apps ecosystem based on the assumption that the phone has a large touchscreen? Only way I can think of is you make the phone with both a large touchscreen and a keyboard and you have the thing somehow open up, but then you usually wind up with something about the size and weight of a housebrick.
Look at the Torch 9810 [gsmarena.com]. 3.2" screen, slide keyboard, 14.6mm thick. A small screen is less of a problem if you don't have a keyboard taking up half of it.
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The Palm Pre managed a touchscreen and a pretty decent keyboard. And a pretty decent OS, for that matter.
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Really? [motorola.com] Is [samsung.com] that [htc.com] a fact? [t-mobile.com]
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1. One good example, assuming it wasn't Verizon exclusive and thus actually available outside the US.
2. "Coming soon" with Gingerbread? That does not make me optimistic about their level of continuing software support.
3. You don't call that a "low to mid range" phone? Furthermore, it'll never get ICS.
4. T-mobile exclusive and again, no ICS in sight.
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There are virtually no Android handsets with keyboards, and most of those that do have keyboards are low to mid range phones. As RIM have a reputation for building phones which have very good keyboards, surely this could be part of their differentiation strategy.
Exactly.
A Torch 9810 with Android would be excellent and would almost certainly sell like crazy. I don't imagine the porting would even be that difficult. Several Android devices use the same SoC.
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Blackberry OS 10 is beautiful. However there were other problems. ....
So what does any of this have to do with BB10? None of the current BB models are running BB 10 (including Bold and Torch) - it hasn't been released yet.