BlackBerry CEO: 'We Will Survive As A Company'

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Has it even been two weeks since BlackBerry rolled out its CEO to make that "we're still alive" statement? Well, at least the company is getting more optimistic. ;)

We will survive as a company, and now I am rather confident. We're managing the supply chain, we are managing inventories, we are managing cash, and we have expenses now at a number that is very manageable. BlackBerry has survived; now we have to start looking at growth.
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Seeing as it's the CEO's job to spin things to look the best they can. 'We Will Survive As A Company' is code for "We're totally screwed".

Seriously, never have I seen a company so mismanaged. They went from market leader to a tie for last with 0.5% of the market.
 
So you can keep the lights on. But do you have the resources to compete in the most competitive device market there is currently?
 
Now launch a device that WoWs me like it did in the early 2000's. Not the gigantic turds that are so far out of touch with the majority of the market it is more pathetic than anything.

I'll be waiting...probably forever given what BB seems to think is the real problem.
 
I've been in the smart phone market for the last 6 years. When I started, BB was the King of the Hill. Super arrogant company. I remember one of the execs actually yelling at a developer at the conference for bringing in an iPhone at the time. (Android wasn't even out yet).
I remember the Storm - it had a clickable touchscreen. What a piece of shit that was!
They failed to innovate. They lost. Give shareholders back their money and move on.
Everyone else has.
 
They should remake a slider phone like the OG Droid from Motorola with updated specs and let that be their first android phone with their own apps like their messenger and other security related apps.
 
They released the Passport, which is a very polarizing device, but it's an exclusive with ATT. ATT will not market it, won't bring it in stores, and pretty much doesn't even acknowledge it exists. They are releasing an updated "Classic" style phone with talk and hang-up buttons, and I'm sure there will be a successor to the all-touch Z30 (which followed up the Z10). Both devices, when given a fair chance, were quite well received.

Now with the Amazon Store, and the ability to side-load Android apps quite easily, they have a damn good phone in my opinion. But, this ATT exclusive is retarded, there's no marketing, they need another all-touch device, and they need to get out the word that you can run Amazon/Android apps on it. Marketing department.... what are they doing?!
 
charold said:
They released the Passport, which is a very polarizing device, but it's an exclusive with ATT. ATT will not market it, won't bring it in stores, and pretty much doesn't even acknowledge it exists.
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From what I can tell AT&T never actually had any Passports for sale. Most people seem to speculate that it's a supply problem from BB. There's a thread in the ATT forums. http://forums.att.com/t5/BlackBerry/Blackberry-Passport/td-p/4045050/page/4

If you were going to get a blackberry, that would be the blackberry to get.
 
It may be too late for this now, but when RIM originally ran into trouble this was my prescription for a turnaround:

  • Cancel development of blackberry OS. Shift resources to making proprietary apps for outlook integration for other phone OS:es. Outlook integration - after all - was RIM's strong suite.
  • Either spin off handset division, or shift it to making phones with Android or Windows mobile operating systems. Include blackberries proprietary Outlook integration suite above. Market as "smartphones for business".
  • Decide whether or not it makes sense to either sell (via app stores or licensing to other handset makers) the outlook integration suite.

If they had done this back in 2008 - 2009 (or maybe even 2010) it could have worked.

Problem is, since then they no longer have the market cornered on Outlook integration. Android, iOS and (no surprise here) windows mobile all do this well today.

It seems to me RIM no longer has a competitive edge in any of its markets.

I don't see how they can survive long term.
 
BlackberryZombie.png


I don't think I've ever seen a company work THIS hard to take themselves from an industry leadership position and flush the entire company down the shitter in such a series of painful master strokes. The company and their products are completely irrelevant to the industry and market segment they helped foster.

This is what happens when you have too many people drinking the company Kool-Aid.
 
Has anyone here actually used a BB10 device for any real period of time? How about using it for business? The Passport looks great, and my Q10 is phenomenal. They have done some things with the QNX based OS, while buying up a couple of companies with some great ideas and implementing them into the BB10 OS that is, dare I say, game changing. It's just, no one knows about it.... lol. I couldn't imagine giving up a few key features of my Q10, namely

BB Hub - I have 6 emails, plus WhatsApp, BBM, GTalk, text messaging all on the Hub.
Universal Search/Commands
Multi-tasking (true multi-tasking)
 
charold said:
Has anyone here actually used a BB10 device for any real period of time? How about using it for business? The Passport looks great, and my Q10 is phenomenal. They have done some things with the QNX based OS, while buying up a couple of companies with some great ideas and implementing them into the BB10 OS that is, dare I say, game changing. It's just, no one knows about it.... lol. I couldn't imagine giving up a few key features of my Q10, namely

BB Hub - I have 6 emails, plus WhatsApp, BBM, GTalk, text messaging all on the Hub.
Universal Search/Commands
Multi-tasking (true multi-tasking)
Click to expand...

Yes I have and it isn't that great. It isn't a bad phone but it isn't game changing by any stretch. Couple that with the fact that BB still hasn't figured out that the rest of the world doesn't want to lose half their screen for a damn keyboard and it isn't difficult to figure out why. If they want to sell a phone with a keyboard for the 0.5% of the population out there who can't figure out how to install a custom software keyboard that is infinitely better than the thing that comes on Android/IOS by default, fine. But they need to release it Side by Side to a non keyboard handset that gives us a decent touch screen.
 
What they failed to mention is that they will survive as a company because they going to change their lineup and start to sell these types of blackberries from now on

220px-Ripe%2C_ripening%2C_and_green_blackberries.jpg


People will just eat them up when they hit the stores
 
John Chen is a good CEO. He brought BB up to where it was around 08. So yes, I believe they will survive as a company and start to do better. They're stock is up again, also.

And BlackBerry never said "We're still alive". That's complete BS, Steve. Sorry.
 
Blackberry will survive. If it changes how it does business. If it keeps trying to push it's Blackberry OS and phones, it will eventually die. It needs to innovate and bring something huge to the table, not a "me too" device (which was what many did when Blackberry was on top - copied them).
 
Zarathustra[H];1041222470 said:
It may be too late for this now, but when RIM originally ran into trouble this was my prescription for a turnaround:

  • Cancel development of blackberry OS. Shift resources to making proprietary apps for outlook integration for other phone OS:es. Outlook integration - after all - was RIM's strong suite.
  • Either spin off handset division, or shift it to making phones with Android or Windows mobile operating systems. Include blackberries proprietary Outlook integration suite above. Market as "smartphones for business".
  • Decide whether or not it makes sense to either sell (via app stores or licensing to other handset makers) the outlook integration suite.

If they had done this back in 2008 - 2009 (or maybe even 2010) it could have worked.

Problem is, since then they no longer have the market cornered on Outlook integration. Android, iOS and (no surprise here) windows mobile all do this well today.

It seems to me RIM no longer has a competitive edge in any of its markets.

I don't see how they can survive long term.
Click to expand...
This is pretty much what they've done...in terms of selling secure infrastructure that runs on other platforms.

I don't follow BB anymore so I don't know how much they've diverged from making devices and how much they've put into development of their secure platform but my suspicions are that's where they're going to remain viable, if at all.
 
steakman1971 said:
I've been in the smart phone market for the last 6 years. When I started, BB was the King of the Hill. Super arrogant company. I remember one of the execs actually yelling at a developer at the conference for bringing in an iPhone at the time. (Android wasn't even out yet).
I remember the Storm - it had a clickable touchscreen. What a piece of shit that was!
They failed to innovate. They lost. Give shareholders back their money and move on.
Everyone else has.
Click to expand...

You forgot the best part: the downright price gouging on Blackberry Enterprise Server licenses. I do not miss those days.
 
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