Blackberry quits hardware industry after record loss - Polidicks

[QUOTE]BlackBerry said Wednesday that it will stop internal development of smartphones, relying on partners for any future hardware efforts […] “The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners,” CEO John Chen said in a statement. “This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital.”[/QUOTE] [url]https://9to5google.com/2016/09/28/blackberry-hardware-exit/[/url]

That's a shame. BB makes nice phones.

[QUOTE=Lambeth;51121463]That's a shame. BB makes nice phones.[/QUOTE] Just not nice enough for anyone to want to buy anymore.

Yeah, the priv was pretty nice. But RIM was too arrogant and took too long to hop aboard the android train, so they got what was coming. It's quite a shame too, in the early days especially iPhones were FAR better for businesses than android due to security and other features, but if blackberry made an android with those qualities and still having a lot of the same software and support they had with their old phones, they might have made a killing.

[QUOTE=Lazzars;51121471]Just not nice enough for anyone to want to buy anymore.[/QUOTE] The other thing is software is more important than hardware nowadays, you need to be integrated into either the google or apple ecosystem. BB was a little too slow in making that shift.

Android would of saved them if they went to it earlier honestly

Typing this on a Priv. shame, really, this thing isnt bad. Battery lasts for a full 8 hour shift streaming music, decent screen, fairly tough.

What else have they got? Unfortunately, I think that the phone market isn't diverse enough for a lot of American consumers. I mean, there IS a lot of diversity, but for a lot of Americans it's either Samsung or Apple. People ask me what kind of phone I have (Huawei Honor) and none of them have heard of the company

[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;51121501]Android couldn't have saved them, likely it only made their situation worse because they couldn't differentiate it in a supercrowded market (That's also Nokia's reasoning for going with WP after that cock Stephen Elop killed the N9 [sp]of which RIM took heavy inspiration from and borrowed the sdk from too[/sp]) The Passport is still much more appealing than the PRIV but they should've targeted a more appealing price point as well[/QUOTE] Well, nowadays there are androids that serve the enterprise market, but early on there wasn't.

Good fucking riddance. I HATE blackberry. Working in IT and having to deal with RIMs fuckign retarded backend BES/BIS bullshit server makes me want to spoon my eyeballs out. Did you know you can't even save your blackberry contacts to an sd card??????!?!?!?!?!? I had to deal with this shit yesterday. If a user doesn't have blackberry ID then you're FUCKED for backing up/restoring their data. I hope we never see anything like blackberry ever again.

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;51121596]Well, nowadays there are androids that serve the enterprise market, but early on there wasn't.[/QUOTE] Ironically, that's what Blackberry probably should've banked on when their marketshare was slipping. A third-party spin of Android meant for businesses demanding security.

The Priv was a great phone, and probably would've sold well if it wasn't so expensive, and wasn't so reliant on BB's security features (which only slowed down how often the phone got updates). If there was ever a Priv converted into an upcoming Nexus device, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. And sadly, I don't really see BB lasting on the software side either. I don't know anyone that uses BBM. It's mostly just Hangouts or Whatsapp.

The saving grace of Blackberry is the fact that their phones are notorious for their levels of encryption. It's sorta the reason you see so many radicals using them as pre-pay phones.

With iPhone going down the shitter, what phone should I get for my next contract to replace it? I only use it for internet stuff, messenger and playing music pretty much...

[QUOTE=DiBBs27;51121749]Did you know you can't even save your blackberry contacts to an sd card??????!?!?!?!?!? I had to deal with this shit yesterday. If a user doesn't have blackberry ID then you're FUCKED for backing up/restoring their data.[/QUOTE] A lot of Android phones (and AFAIK all apple phones?) don't even have SD card slots, so I can't imagine that situation is much better on the alternatives. People just use the google contact syncing the same way I assume blackberry ID works??

[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;51122531]With iPhone going down the shitter, what phone should I get for my next contract to replace it? I only use it for internet stuff, messenger and playing music pretty much...[/QUOTE] Get a samsung or a nexus phone?

I wonder what this means for all the employees in the Kitchener-Waterloo area... If they are shifting focus it could mean even more sweeping layoffs in the near future. Fortunately the area still has a lot of start-up tech companies, as well as offices of the larger ones, but this is still heavy news regardless.

A total disconnect with what people actually want and use will do that to you

[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;51121501]Android couldn't have saved them, likely it only made their situation worse because they couldn't differentiate it in a supercrowded market (That's also Nokia's reasoning for going with WP after that cock Stephen Elop killed the N9 [sp]of which RIM took heavy inspiration from and borrowed the sdk from too[/sp]) The Passport is still much more appealing than the PRIV but they should've targeted a more appealing price point as well[/QUOTE] They didn't kill the N9 because it couldn't be differentiated, they killed it because Meego wasn't good enough yet to start competing with Android. That wasn't even his decision entirely, either. Same with Blackberry, they stayed with BB10 too long and paid the price because of it.

[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;51122514]The saving grace of Blackberry is the fact that their phones are notorious for their levels of encryption. It's sorta the reason you see so many radicals using them as pre-pay phones.[/QUOTE] Eh, not really if you actually care about privacy. If you actually care you'll use something like xmpp with OMEMO or GPG with xmpp/email. Because otherwise it was DES encrypted (Triple DES, to be fair) and it went through blackberry's servers unless you were willing to run your own. [QUOTE=Elspin;51122544]A lot of Android phones (and AFAIK all apple phones?) don't even have SD card slots, so I can't imagine that situation is much better on the alternatives. People just use the google contact syncing the same way I assume blackberry ID works??[/QUOTE] On android at least you can back up your contacts to your sim card

RIM is going the way of all great Canadian tech companies. They've had their heyday, now it's time for mismanagement and failure to adapt to modern trends to run them into bankruptcy just like it did Commodore and Nortel.

[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;51122801]I have contacts that were former Nokia employees [I]directly involved with the development at the time[/I] and they claim Elop decided to go with WP because it would be mutually beneficial to both parties (Nokia could only focus on HW and some SW improvements instead of the whole stack, MSFT deals with SW and gives them special bonuses), if they have went Gingerbread path they would've been slaughtered by other OEMs and they would be standing without allies[/QUOTE] They were slaughtered by OEMs and Microsoft pulled the rug under them by not allowing WP7 upgrades. Elop was an idiot, WP was a clear shit move from day 1. I can't imagine an Android path worse than what happened with WP.

[QUOTE=Psyke89;51123206]They were slaughtered by OEMs and Microsoft pulled the rug under them by not allowing WP7 upgrades. Elop was an idiot, WP was a clear shit move from day 1. I can't imagine an Android path worse than what happened with WP.[/QUOTE] They tried to go with Android first, but part of the deal was having Nokia maps as the default map provider, which Google didn't allow. [editline]29th September 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;51122801]Read what I've said again. I have contacts that were former Nokia employees [I]directly involved with the development at the time[/I] and they claim Elop decided to go with WP because it would be mutually beneficial to both parties (Nokia could only focus on HW and some SW improvements instead of the whole stack, MSFT deals with SW and gives them special bonuses), if they have went Gingerbread path they would've been slaughtered by other OEMs and they would be standing without allies Also the N9 outsold the Lumia 800 and 900 [I]together[/I] while not even having been launched in strategical countries [sp]also Meego is super good even today, still has a much superior UX compared to any handset on the market and a platform subsystem that actually makes sense and isn't a nightmare to maintain[/sp] The Z10 and Passport also sold better than the PRIV.[/QUOTE] I'm not saying that Meego was terrible. I'm saying that it came too late, regardless of how good it was. Nokia's decision to stay on Symbian as long as possible cost them the race. As much as I'd like them to still be around making phones and creating a 3rd option, they aren't. And of course the N9 would outsell the Lumia 800 and 900; Nokia is a very well known name and Lumia wasn't and still isn't.

[QUOTE=The golden;51122617]The CEO before Chen really dropped the ball on the devices at the time. I can forgive BB10 for issues with being a brand new OS, but my god the phones... (I own 3 of them). Launching an entire lineup of devices with almost literally the exact same outdated (even for the time) specs. Chen continued using these same fucking specs for 2 more phones (Leap and Classic) before finally changing it for the Passport but it was pretty much too late. Lack of decent devices and lack of app ecosystem had killed BB10 at that point, even though it was really nice and slick. And their first foray into Android, The Priv, launched at a fucking insane near-$900CAD. Even after all this time since launch, the price is still [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/P47VIYc.png[/IMG] And their 2nd Android phone, the DTEK50, lacked really basic functionality especially for something claiming to be built for security. Like the thing had no damn fingerprint reader. Derp? At least it was priced reasonably. The DTEK60 is going to have that though, and more updated specs....but they've gone back to a $700USD+ pricepoint. You have a single-digit amount of the marketshare. You can't charge Apple and Samsung prices. Get real. I love BlackBerry, I really do....but they are fucking hopeless at hardware. It's really hard to imagine a company can drop the ball so many consecutive times but they pulled it off. They make really good software though so I hope they find their future there.[/QUOTE] I really wanted the PRIV when it was announced, due to the actual, physical keyboard. But it was priced to shit. I just checked and it's still "STARTING from 702€ (~788$)" so fuuuuuck that. [editline]29th September 2016[/editline] Waait no, the cheapest one is actually 799€ (~897$) so haha. It seemingly showed some made-up number in the search result then the actual number when I clicked the link.

I remember the Priv standing for privacy and privilege.

How the mighty have fallen.

[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;51125841]How the mighty have fallen.[/QUOTE] In a market so cash hungry, if you fail to innovate you'll struggle to stay float. [QUOTE=FlashMarsh;51122531]With iPhone going down the shitter, what phone should I get for my next contract to replace it? I only use it for internet stuff, messenger and playing music pretty much...[/QUOTE] Don't replace it if you don't need too. Its that simple.

Just as an FYI to everyone in case it's not known - this doesn't mean that we won't be seeing more Blackberry phones. It just means that Blackberry won't be manufacturing them in-house. Their latest phone, the DTEK50, was contracted out to TCL (Parent company of Alcatel). The DTEK60 is rumored to be available in November, which is also through TCL. So we're going to continue to see Blackberry-branded devices running their proprietary security softwares.

the us military still uses blackberries for official work phones, tho l heard that they're planning to switch sometime soon