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New Book Explores How the iPhone Contributed to BlackBerry's Downfall
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Today's news that Apple was focused on compatibility with legacy iPhones reminds me ol RIM and MS.
Companies have to be ok to let go of the day's core product and be mindful of upcoming changes and competition. Old iPhones are the past and belong there perfectly. Focus on where the puck will be, not where it was 5 yrs ago.
Companies have to be ok to let go of the day's core product and be mindful of upcoming changes and competition. Old iPhones are the past and belong there perfectly. Focus on where the puck will be, not where it was 5 yrs ago.
We'll see. The media is exceedingly fickle and disloyal. And IT follows, it does not lead...because it serves - if Google starts to topple, IT's not in a position to be the thing to save it...just like IT couldn't save RIM/BB.
Android changed because of the iPhone and evolved to the worlds most popular OS.
Blackberry didn't change. And the Microsoft CEO openly laughed at the iPhone.
Looks like Apple were innovative and Google were smart.
Blackberry didn't change. And the Microsoft CEO openly laughed at the iPhone.
Looks like Apple were innovative and Google were smart.
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SurePress
Seeing this reminds me of my old Storm, I actually enjoyed SurePress and thought the idea of separating the highlighting of an on-screen element separate from the actual action trigger opened up the possibility for more desktop-like software. I'm hoping Apple brings Force Touch to the iPhone and can emulate something to the effect of what SurePress did.
Seeing this reminds me of my old Storm, I actually enjoyed SurePress and thought the idea of separating the highlighting of an on-screen element separate from the actual action trigger opened up the possibility for more desktop-like software. I'm hoping Apple brings Force Touch to the iPhone and can emulate something to the effect of what SurePress did.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with Search, though.
Google won't lose its position as king of search because people migrate to Bing.com on their browser. It will l lose its position if people start using Spotlight on Apple products and Corrana straight from the Windows desktop.
In a similar manner that Windows isn't threatened by the Mac or Chrome OS or another desktop OS, but by the rise of the smartphone.
Im not again those examples will hurt Google, but it's that sort of sneak attack that should worry it, not only rival search engines.
The only people who killed the Blackberry was Blackberry.
You can't expect people to be forced to use a Blackberry server and its licenses to use a device that is useless if their company doesn't have a Blackberry infrastructure.
Too many people move from job to job, and what's the point of getting a Blackberry if it only works at the 1 job you had 2 years ago?
You can't expect people to be forced to use a Blackberry server and its licenses to use a device that is useless if their company doesn't have a Blackberry infrastructure.
Too many people move from job to job, and what's the point of getting a Blackberry if it only works at the 1 job you had 2 years ago?
Nah, most of Blackberry's death should be blamed on terrible management that had everything going right for them but wouldn't evolve to meet their competitors until it was way too late. Now about six years too late Blackberry has one of the best mobile OS ever... and like >5% of the marketshare.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Arrogant "our way is the best way" executives losing touch with ever-evolving markets and expecting buyers to like anything they want to roll out. Always a recipe for disaster.
I can remember when Crackberries were deemed essential business tools. Everyone had to have one to be successful. And then the market turned.
All big, successful corporations can learn a lot from this recent history.
I can remember when Crackberries were deemed essential business tools. Everyone had to have one to be successful. And then the market turned.
All big, successful corporations can learn a lot from this recent history.
I left Verizon for an iPhone at AT&T back in 2008. But not until I handled the Storm first, which was absolute garbage. I remember thinking back then that if Blackberry doesn't come out with their version of essentially an iPhone running their OS, they were done for.
Don't get why we would need to read (need) that book.
By all news accounts and info available, they fell asleep at the switch.
Plenty of companies in that grave yard.
As for lessons learned: Don't sit on your butts because you are a market leader or think you have a business segment covered.
There will always be new ideas to interrupt existing markets.
Quite the contrary. Apparently the author has confused dumb phones and smart phones.
1. Unlike with the carrier walled app gardens for dumb phones, smart phone users could download apps from any app store or source. Moreover, the iPhone didn't even have native third party apps for its first year... and then Apple came up with its own walled garden.
2. Many smartphones came with, or could download, nice non-WAP web browsers from Opera, Minimo (based on Mozilla), Netfront, Picsel and other providers, some with really decent HTML, CSS and Javascript support.
Heck, Apple used the basic idea of tap-to-zoom from one of those browsers (it's even referenced in their own patents as prior art). Some also had tabs, and the ability to have their view dragged around by finger.
Even Samsung had a finger friendly browser before Apple. My 2005 Samsung i730 smartphone came with Picsel, an amazing document browser (HTML, PDF, Word, etc) dating back to 2003, that especially seems to have influenced Mobile Safari, with its full page rendering, flick scrolling with inertia, a tap-to-zoom version with blurred view for speed, and miniature pages for history / bookmarks. In fact, Picsel filed a lawsuit against Apple in 2009, which was dropped soon after... likely because of Apple settling with them.
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Based on profit it would appear Apple is smarter.
They make more with less.
At the end of the day you count up your pennies and that is how you see who won.
Case in point: Blackbeery. They're running out of pennies.
And then the BlackBerry Playbook that launched with no standalone email client and required a BlackBerry phone for a lot of basic functionality. It was like a gigantic Apple Watch in that respect
Even better was when they introduced it, they showed how it really killed the iPad 1 in various performance tests... But they didn't release it until just around the time the iPad 2 came out.
Even better was when they introduced it, they showed how it really killed the iPad 1 in various performance tests... But they didn't release it until just around the time the iPad 2 came out.
Umm, they wrote a book about the rise and fall of Blackberry, not simply about how the iPhone helped bring it about.
Not that the iPhone wasn't important, but as others have pointed out it's actually Microsoft that sent RIM into a slide simply by turning ActiveSync into a solid, stable, secure protocol with the majority of features that used to sell people on BES.
As former owner of a Storm, my feelings were quite mixed. I actually liked the hardware overall. The click button screen allowed it to mimic a mouse interface... I just wish it hadn't see-sawed when typing. I also liked the fact that it had a dedicated play/pause button, and that I could change tracks by holding down on the volume keys
The major flaw with the storm was its software. It was obvious that the touch interface was just slapped on to the existing BB OS. With many apps being completely unusable on the device.
The major flaw with the storm was its software. It was obvious that the touch interface was just slapped on to the existing BB OS. With many apps being completely unusable on the device.
Found myself an excerpt. I knew people who had Palm devices, a few of us had Windows Mobile devices, and then I had a teacher who had the Storm, and my dad had one of the earlier Blackberrys (he hated it).
My interpretation, after seeing the "Worldwide smartphone unit shipments" graph of both Blackberry and the iPhone between 2007-2011, is that they benefitted from the smartphone going mainstream. More people wanted to move away from T9 and shorthand on feature phones, and so they got a lot of the texting crowd who still wanted really nice phones in funky colors.
And what really happened at that 2010-2011 point in which they slant down, is that Instagram had blown up, Twitter kept on getting bigger, and Angry Birds was the biggest game at the time. So they lost that Motorola Razr crowd who then decided that they could deal with not having a keyboard if everything else was better.
And when they were finally trying to grab those people's attention's again, it was just too late. Nothing they introduced in Blackberry 10 was interesting to that crowd. It obviously helped them keep their business audience, but there are obviously a lot of them who have been willing to adapt to the other platforms and are moving away.
My interpretation, after seeing the "Worldwide smartphone unit shipments" graph of both Blackberry and the iPhone between 2007-2011, is that they benefitted from the smartphone going mainstream. More people wanted to move away from T9 and shorthand on feature phones, and so they got a lot of the texting crowd who still wanted really nice phones in funky colors.
And what really happened at that 2010-2011 point in which they slant down, is that Instagram had blown up, Twitter kept on getting bigger, and Angry Birds was the biggest game at the time. So they lost that Motorola Razr crowd who then decided that they could deal with not having a keyboard if everything else was better.
And when they were finally trying to grab those people's attention's again, it was just too late. Nothing they introduced in Blackberry 10 was interesting to that crowd. It obviously helped them keep their business audience, but there are obviously a lot of them who have been willing to adapt to the other platforms and are moving away.
But in a real way they kept MS going even during the Balmer "moron lost in thew wilderness" years. IT's preference for Windows, and Windows Server prevented a lot of people from jumping to Apple or Linux. I heard "But that's what we use at work and I have to be compatible" and "but my IT person won't let me put that on the network" so many times in those days. The funny thing was that when I was an IT person I had a Mac. People would be telling me that Macs wouldn't work on our network as I'm sitting in front of them updating their Novell ID, changing their rights, or logging into the server systems.
Oh and FWIW I had a work BB. PRe storm and I detested it. Hated the keyboard. HAted the screen. Hated everything about it.
Thank you.
I could not believe no one else was correcting the author on this. The facts are important and to rewrite history so casually does a disservice to this forum and anyone who might read MacRumors articles for factual content.
Interesting how history repeated itself in the 1980s and also in 2007: 1980s: IBM ignored Apple's Macintosh and now, Blackberry ignored the iPhone.
History can be damn punishing at times.
History can be damn punishing at times.
Oh Wow I didn't know you were an analyst and could predict the future of other companies except for the glorified Apple?
Apple didn't kill IBM. It was their decision to use off the shelf parts, which made it ridiculously easy for other companies to produce machines compatible with MS-DOS.
Technically, they were right about that--RIM's core customers do/did actually find the iPhone and later clones unappealing due to its lack of a hardware keyboard. What they missed is that the total number of those core customers amounts to a Ryan Seacrest plus a small rounding error in the smartphone market. The rest of their customers--the vast majority--were only using Blackberries because there wasn't anything better available.
This mindset comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody, but nothing more clearly sums up why not just RIM, but most once-successful businesses, fail: What they used to do is no longer a viable market, and instead of adapting and evolving, management sits there bewildered and angry that the world has changed out from under them. At best, they panic and flail, at worst they stick their fingers in their ears and ignore the problem until it's far too late (and then they panic).
Microsoft has to a degree been dealing with the fallout from this with regards to consumer Windows and mobile in general, although they had enough monopolistic profit and buffer to ride through a lot of it before getting their act somewhat together, and their dogged assaults on new markets (Xbox, for example) gives them something to lean on when the true cash cow gets sick. Whether they come out of it strong, or more of an IBM "still successful, but a pale shadow of the once-mighty", remains to be seen.