My work gives us a stipend for BYOD and then uses Good by Blackberry to contain emails and calendar. I think that with Good and BES they will linger in the enterprise for a while. However, I do hope the Enterprise world will one day move on from Good to a product that could actually be called Great. To your point, I do think that BB has a much better chance in the Software (especially the server side) versus hardware.
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BlackBerry Classic Discontinued to Pave the Way for 'State of the Art Devices'
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I've read elsewhere that all the BBOS 10 devices have been discontinued and are available only in limited quantities while supplies last.
BlackBerry has announced that it will no longer manufacture the BlackBerry Classic, meaning that the touchscreen smartphone will no longer be available once remaining stock is depleted through official sales channels.BlackBerry Classic, equipped with a physical QWERTY keyboard, was unveiled in December 2014 with a design similar to the once-popular BlackBerry Bold smartphone series released between May 2008 and November 2011. BlackBerry's dominance has shrunk considerably since then, however, with iOS and Android smartphones now combining for some 98 percent of worldwide market share.
BlackBerry said it will be updating its smartphone lineup with "state of the art devices," presumably with an Android focus like the BlackBerry Priv. The company will continue to support BlackBerry 10 with software updates, including version 10.3.3 due next month and a second update to follow next year. The BlackBerry 10-powered BlackBerry Passport and BlackBerry Leap remain available for sale.
Article Link: BlackBerry Classic Discontinued to Pave the Way for 'State of the Art Devices'
Do you remember how huge the iPod was at its peak? There were literally no competitors by miles. It was a must have device and we all clung to our seats in anticipation of next year's version and it showed no signs of slowing down.
Apple could have milked the iPod for several more years but they instead introduced a device that would kill it. By doing so, they entered an industry full of experienced competitors. They weren't afraid of shedding their success in a climb for an even bigger hit that would redefine the company and the industry itself.
While some may laugh now, I see the AppleWatch as that same move, building a personal computer on your wrist that will in time make the iPhone juggernaut seem like old news.
Apple has never been one to stand still and hold on to the past.
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This was under Steve Jobs. Personally, I believe we see a new Apple which more and more stumbles over their lack of new ideas (and their arrogance that we will buy every new iPhone anyway) – and IMO the Apple Watch is the perfect example, a desperate try to prove – four years after the iPad – that they can still define and revolutionize product categories even without Jobs. They failed and I don't think they will be able to still create a momentum for the Apple Watch. (Maybe if they lower its price significantly, but that wouldn't solve the problem, but create another as their incredible financial success depends on high margins.)
Apple probably will never be at the edge of bankruptcy again and stay a very profitable company for a long time – but they are slowly, but surely going the ladder down again in small steps. The kingdom is shrinking.
4 key things that no one else seems to care about:
1) Keyboard.
2) Battery Life.
3) Belt clip holster that puts the device to sleep, or hangs up phone, and securely holds device, while still allowing easy access.
4) Far and above best email client.
I can type on the BB keyboard without looking at it. Good when you are having a conversation with someone in IRL and you don't want them to think you are not paying attention.
Occasionally people see me using my BB and are like "aaawwwwww, I miss my BlackBerry!" Yeah, well, I don't.
1) Keyboard.
2) Battery Life.
3) Belt clip holster that puts the device to sleep, or hangs up phone, and securely holds device, while still allowing easy access.
4) Far and above best email client.
I can type on the BB keyboard without looking at it. Good when you are having a conversation with someone in IRL and you don't want them to think you are not paying attention.
Occasionally people see me using my BB and are like "aaawwwwww, I miss my BlackBerry!" Yeah, well, I don't.
The thing I really appreciated was that they didn't just abandon the iPod as soon as the iPhone started making waves. My favorite iPod is still the 5th gen nano, and that was announced the same year as the 3GS.
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I'm glad you've got an option that works for you. Good on BlackBerry, and hopefully they won't be dead anytime soon.
What do you mean "they failed"? The first iPhone was slow and lacked a lot of functionality at launch. The iPod was a bust when it first came out. The AppleWatch has had more than double the sales of the iPhone in their respective first year. The AppleWatch is following a very familiar pattern with Apple. They've built the barebones technology, released it, iterate until it's what they hoped it to be, then they make a massive marketing push that makes it a must have device in the mainstream.
Apple is betting that soon, everybody will have a powerful computer with an intelligent assistant with them all the time. The smartphone almost achieved that but falls short in that we still have to pick up and carry something around with us in our hands or pockets and interact with it very directly. The fact that people are willing to carry them around bodes well for an even more convenient solution to be adopted when it emerges. A watch is as close to having a computer built in to our bodies as it comes. When both Siri and AppleWatch become as powerful as — no, more powerful than — the iPhones we carry today, they'll become its successor and people will stop carrying around bricks of glass.
You may reject the idea of doing all of your personal computing by talking to your wrist, but you and I will get old and newer generations will laugh at us old folks carrying "dumb phones" that you have to tap at while they're talking to the artificial intelligence on their wrists. The world keeps moving, we just have to try not to become entrenched in comfortable old ways of doing things. That's what doomed Blackberry.
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The good news for diehard Blackberry fans is that if this is accurate, based on current sales the few thousand left in the warehouse won't sell out until at least 2030.
Okay, so it's easy to make fun of Blackberry, but I suppose this really is sort of the symbolic end of an era.
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While you may or may not be right about the future prevalence of wrist-mounted or other wearable computing, and you're certainly right that "just because you don't like it doesn't mean that's not what the world will be doing in a decade or two", one thing I'm 99% certain you're wrong about is that all public computing will be screen-less.
It's as simple as this: People like reading words, they like looking at photos, they like watching video, and that will necessitate some sort of visual display for whatever device people are computing with. Whether it's a heads-up on a Google Glass-like device, an optic implant in a hypothetical cyberpunk future, a phone-like device, the arm of your shirt, or something else, I can't say, but people are not going to be doing all of their computing just through a digital assistant.
Likewise for input, there are times when you want information but cannot or do not want to be saying it out loud. Sexting your significant other, doing an embarrassing search query on the bus, messing around in class, or just in a quite space where you don't feel like speaking out loud, there will always be a desire for non-aural input.
Just because we can video chat doesn't mean people don't still use audio only to communicate, and just because audio communication has existed for over a century hasn't prevented people from texting. On the contrary, it's only grown in popularity.
Again, I'm not making predictions, I'm just predicting that non-audio computing will always be a thing.
You misunderstood. I don't expect screens to go away. There will always be iPads to pick up and sit back to read or browse through news, photos, videos, etc. There will also be devices on which we do our work on a screen. But our phones as communication devices, personal assistants and our link to the internet can be largely replaced by having it miniaturized on to our wrists where it is always ready to connect us with others through messages, notify us of our day's appointments, give us a quick answer about any world knowledge, control our homes, pay our purchases day to day, our access to our data on other devices, and provide us transportation to move around but also more importantly, monitor our actual body and its health full time, something that a phone can't do simply because it's not personal enough.
My point is that Apple is not standing still taking the iPhone's success for granted. The people who think so today are of the kind who doubted Apple could keep the success of their company grounded on an mp3 player forever. Again, Apple has never stood still.
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Shame now we are left with android as the dominant player. Yay /s
I miss WebOS and I loved what BB10 had to offer. For now we have IOS a solid alternative for individuals who want nothing to do with Android or buy into the "Android master race" mentality for what I deem to be a dreadfully inferior OS and visually unappealing. I of course do still root for Windows 10 mobile, as a fan, and hopefully its survival is contingent on the desktop!
Still hope BB10 surprises us with a mystery device. Longshot I know!
I miss WebOS and I loved what BB10 had to offer. For now we have IOS a solid alternative for individuals who want nothing to do with Android or buy into the "Android master race" mentality for what I deem to be a dreadfully inferior OS and visually unappealing. I of course do still root for Windows 10 mobile, as a fan, and hopefully its survival is contingent on the desktop!
Still hope BB10 surprises us with a mystery device. Longshot I know!
I had a BlackBerry Perl for a long time, I loved that phone, it was fast, compact and the battery would last two days. I felt guilty when I replaced it with the HTC G1. I still think Microsoft should buy BlackBerry, I think it would be a perfect match up and it would probably be easier to secure Windows mobile than Android.
Yeah, the BB Classic is probably my favorite blackberry device. I don't use the holster but agree with your other points. A little sad to see the Classic discontinued.
You misunderstand me completely, I was merely pointing out that Blackberry will continue to offer at least one phone with a physical keyboard. In point of fact, I've always argued against their preservation of the 'feature' as something that has made their phones unattractive to most smartphone users. I'd wager that a huge part of the reason that the Priv flopped as it did was because the slavish clinging to the PKB necessitated a slider design that was costly and ultimately undermined the build quality as well as ensuring the the FFC was a paltry 2MP.
Although this is the end of the "BlackBerry Classic," BlackBerry still has two physical-keyboard phones in their lineup: the Passport and the PRIV. Say what you will about BlackBerry's questionable business practices, the Passport is a cool conceit for those who use their phones primarily for productivity and not for video consumption.
Killing off the Classic means that BlackBerry has killed off 2013/2014 tech. The device was outdated the day it shipped. But there is something to be said for the fact that many business professionals still use and love their BlackBerries and continue to keep up in terms of their workflow and productivity. A BlackBerry is a work tool and a good one at that. If I had the cash, I would have picked up a Passport Silver Edition the day it dropped.
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You're right, there's no way I would go through the effort of sliding that keyboard every time I wanted to type on my phone. I know that sounds incredibly petty, but given the option, I'm going with the faster and more intuitive one every time.
Killing off the Classic means that BlackBerry has killed off 2013/2014 tech. The device was outdated the day it shipped. But there is something to be said for the fact that many business professionals still use and love their BlackBerries and continue to keep up in terms of their workflow and productivity. A BlackBerry is a work tool and a good one at that. If I had the cash, I would have picked up a Passport Silver Edition the day it dropped.
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You're right, there's no way I would go through the effort of sliding that keyboard every time I wanted to type on my phone. I know that sounds incredibly petty, but given the option, I'm going with the faster and more intuitive one every time.
It's not petty, there's a reason that all-touch slabs represent all but the very barest fraction of smartphone sales: it's the one that works from the predominant number of people. Physical keyboards means additional points of mechanical failure, gimmicky layouts like sliders or the damned ugly Mercury that's coming soon, and an absolutely inability to tailor the intended primary input to foreign language. In a world where you want everyone to use your phone, you either:
1.) Alienate many by provided an English-only physical keyboard
2.) Incur the exorbitant cost of making localised layouts
3.) Use a software VKB and not have to worry about it, either as an OEM or as a consumer
Not surprisingly, option 3 is the one that works for everyone but the 250 - 300k die-hard BBRY fans that will swear to anyone that will listen that PKBs are the first and last work in long message composition, speed and productivity.
Exactly.
People are forgetting that almost all smartphones had physical keyboards a long time ago. It was thought to be a necessity. Indispensable.
Then companies started offering glass-slab smartphones alongside QWERTY smartphones.
Well... people eventually started buying glass-slabs more and more... and QWERTY less and less. At which point... companies stopped offering QWERTY models. (except a few holdouts... like Blackberry)
Ian Malcolm might say: "QWERTY smartphones had their shot... and the market selected them for extinction."
Most people here have no clue about the more recent BlackBerry history and portfolio. But that's not surprising as we are on MacRumors and not CrackBerry.
B2T: The Classic was a badly marketed device imho... It was aimed at the die-hard BB users of old times, but the device -despite being of top-notch quality- is not the fastest. It's more or less just a replacement for an old BB Bold. It can technically run apps, even Android Apps, but imho lacks the performance to do so. So, I can understand why they discontinue it first. That said, the Classic is a great mail-machine. And for that purpose, in that size, I doubt there is any better device on the market.
I'm afraid, this the beginning of the end of BB10. It's a great plattform and the Passport and the Leap are still great devices, and I would say the best for their purpose, but suffered from probably the worst marketing.
B2T: The Classic was a badly marketed device imho... It was aimed at the die-hard BB users of old times, but the device -despite being of top-notch quality- is not the fastest. It's more or less just a replacement for an old BB Bold. It can technically run apps, even Android Apps, but imho lacks the performance to do so. So, I can understand why they discontinue it first. That said, the Classic is a great mail-machine. And for that purpose, in that size, I doubt there is any better device on the market.
I'm afraid, this the beginning of the end of BB10. It's a great plattform and the Passport and the Leap are still great devices, and I would say the best for their purpose, but suffered from probably the worst marketing.
There is a problem with that line of thinking that a watch can be a phone. You don't just build a product just because it's the " cool " thing to do. It's dangerous thinking because that can lead to the Pandora's Box being opened leading to more problems. For one thing, the watch is NOT supposed to be made for taking calls. If Apple thinks the Watch is going to be the next phone like device, they have another thing coming which will bite them in the rear.
It's one thing not to stand still but it's another to NOT think things out thoroughly. But they did stand still with the Watch and YET, they haven't solved a way to have the battery last a week or two like the Pebble. They blew off 4-5 years worth of R&D and look what they did to it. The Watch is not a very focused product and it suffers from feature creep. Or feature overload. Look at Pebble and you'll see that it doesn't need that many apps. It was designed to supplement the phone or by independently.
One could use a 'walkie talkie' approach with it, BUT do you realize how expensive it would be to have phone calls made to the watch under a carrier? Do you realize that requires an ear piece for private conversations? Would anyone want to be caught dead looking like a douche talking to a watch in a public place? Especially if a traffic cop SEES you mouthing off to a watch in the car, you'll get pulled over. THINK! There are laws against making calls while driving with a phone in your hand.
Do YOU realize that level of thinking goes against the idea of accessibility? In other words, if a deaf person wants to communicate, he/she needs to use a smartphone to sign with BOTH hands, NOT one. Even using a camera to communicate that way. I should know. I'm one of them. Even some deaf people I know rely on texting with both thumbs, or one. The watch is NOT a good substitute for that.
Especially a watch with a camera or phone built in could be a security issue at a workplace that may be required to be removed. I know that most schools require students to leave their phones in the lockers ( not the colleges, that's different ).
But a watch? That's insane. If Apple merges the phone into the watch, it would make them the most hypocritical company of all time based on hybridization, and because they pooh-poohed ( actually it was Timmy who did that ) Microsoft's Surface. That turned out to be a mistake. MS had the right idea, Apple didn't. Tim shrugged it off out of insecurity, not confidence. I can smell that coming from him.
If Apple had cut back on feature creep for the Watch, it would have seen the price be more affordable to the masses. But no, they had to price themselves out of the market. That's what's biting Apple in the a$$.
Oh, and one more thing. I REMEMBER the original iPod and still have it. I was there when it came out and it started off pretty well. I actually have some hearing loss but can hear the music with the hearing aid when I have the headphone over it. That device was perfect. No need to LOOK at the screen to flip through the albums. I knew them in my head and used the wheel to flip between tracks while I closed my eyes during a nap. iPod Touch? It anti-thetical in design.
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you're kidding me right?
Between 4 models (1 sub-model) in their lineup for the past 2 full financial quarters (BB Classic, BB Leap, BB Passport / Passport SE (full retail only not on carriers), and the BB Priv) they cannot even sell more than 1.3 million *yes I said MILLION devices GLOBALLY ... across the planet!!!
I had loved BlackBerry even fought a self suicidal fight on these boards and I used iphone 3G, 4, 4S, 5, 5S and recently 6 for a brief month ... and STILL I've seen the light (although sickenly late) this company needs to either A > re-hire than real tech geniuses of the past that actually were worth their payrate and FIRE their executives in charge of making their hardware decisions ... the fact their STILL deciding on hardware is beyond me! Mr Chen you should be sent your walking papers and ONLY hired a a bean counter (a-hem an accountant cause you saved crazy spending but the worse is the hardware division)!!
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BB still owns their patents (ignorantly NOT licensing them thus potential wasted cash down the drain when they all expire), the DID just about lay off everyone some 10'000 employees to day in the past 1.5yrs to be completely frank - no exaggerations here!! They barely spend ANY $$ on R&D ... outsourced manufacturing to Hon-Hai some 9mth ago for Classic, Passport, Leap and Priv devices. They frugally use their cash flow and quite honestly BES12 is worth its real development for MDM/EMM solution of mobile devices also now supporting Windows and OSX (not MacOS Sierra of course).
they've been maintaining over $2 billion in cash the past 7 quarters somehow ... don't know how but somehow. ti's now at $2.5 billion cash and investments since the past quarterly announcement 8 days ago.
The iPhone isn't even a phone. It's a complete misnomer. Our personal devices do many things and they do so almost exclusively as a data service. The phone call minutes model is a relic that is disappearing. Apple tends to leave hints of where they're headed by small seemingly unimportant features introduced gradually. Giving IP calls visual parity with phone calls in iOS 10 is one such hint.
Another hint was when Apple introduced voice messages in iMessage ahead of the introduction of the AppleWatch. Continuous voice calls are just another type of message supported by data, not traditional cellular calls.
Finally, the fact that the Watch is not only capable of playing Bluetooth audio but relies on it to play music is another hint that the other shoe has yet to drop. AirPods paired with an AppleWatch and Siri enabled apps brings us on to a path where the Watch will indeed be a complete personal computing device capable of performing tasks via Siri requests. This isn't future stuff. It's already in iOS 10.