Blackberry Cutting 4500 Jobs (40% of workforce)

[killer_carlson]

Why do i think Slava, Cheese and myself are the only blackberry owners in this thread?

I love my bb. It is three years old and i can get two or three days use off of one charge. I was going to go get a z10 next week, but dont know now.

[Cheese]

I was an avid BB user until a few months ago. Unfortunately my office quit supporting them and I seemed to be the only "user" left.
I have now switched to the droid side and have a Galaxy Note 2...
I will never be a fan boy of the apple dark side.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by killer_carlson

Why do i think Slava, Cheese and myself are the only blackberry owners in this thread?

Originally Posted by Cheese

Unfortunately my office quit supporting them and I seemed to be the only "user" left.

Well, that would be reflective of the problems that BB faces/has faced for the last few years.

Also why developers aren't bothering to support it, which hurts their ecosystem, which turns off customers, which continues the vicious circle.

[CubicleGeek]

Originally Posted by Cheese

I was an avid BB user until a few months ago. Unfortunately my office quit supporting them and I seemed to be the only "user" left.

RIM had such a huge advantage and just kept doing so many things wrong in the last 5 years that it is hard to feel sorry for them.

The roll out of BB10 and BES10 was a disaster IMO. Not only did we have to implement BES10 to support BB10 phones, BES10 is not backwards compatible meaning we had to keep BES5 running in parallel to support all the users that have not moved over to a new device.

I wish we dropped them and not elected to keep BB as an option moving forward.

[NuclearPizzaMan]

Originally Posted by killer_carlson

Why do i think Slava, Cheese and myself are the only blackberry owners in this thread?

I love my bb. It is three years old and i can get two or three days use off of one charge. I was going to go get a z10 next week, but dont know now.

Lots of people here are probably former blackberry users though, especially any who worked downtown in the last ~5 years.

[Bill Bumface]

Using a Blackberry reminded me of using Lotus Notes. Something that sat on it's heels and watched the world go by, and relied it on being too expensive to switch.

[QuadCityImages]

I spent 10 minutes looking for the thread when I predicted a time of death for RIM, but couldn't find it. I was made fun of at the time for being overly pessimistic, but I swear it might have been 2014...

[BloodFetish]

Originally Posted by CubicleGeek

RIM had such a huge advantage and just kept doing so many things wrong in the last 5 years that it is hard to feel sorry for them.

The roll out of BB10 and BES10 was a disaster IMO. Not only did we have to implement BES10 to support BB10 phones, BES10 is not backwards compatible meaning we had to keep BES5 running in parallel to support all the users that have not moved over to a new device.

I wish we dropped them and not elected to keep BB as an option moving forward.

Before rolling out BES10 in parallel did you consider going the ActiveSync route on the new BB10 phones, or was that not an option for your company?

[CubicleGeek]

The better security offered by BES10 was considered necessary.

[Hack&Lube]

Yeah, we have both BES5 and BES10 running in parallel. The BES5 supports most of the users who haven't shed their oldschool BB's yet and that happens to be users like VPs, etc. although our CFO just switched to a BB Q10.

I like the Z10. I keep it on me at all times in the BB holster like it's 2008. I like the hub tremendously for keeping my e-mail, text messages, facebook, etc. all on one page, one swipe to the side. It's one of BB10's redeeming features.

[The Goon]

Long, but fascinating read about the fall of Blackberry in today's G&M.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/?page=all

Well-researched and comprehensive.

[RedMileDJ]

Originally Posted by The Goon

Long, but fascinating read about the fall of Blackberry in today's G&M.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/?page=all

Well-researched and comprehensive.

Good read. Makes me sad. I don't think any Canadian wants to see BB fail, but here we are.

[edslunch]

According to the article there were two paths they didn't take - focusing on making BlackBerry Messenger a de facto industry standard alternative to SMS (Balsille quit when this was canned) and staying as a button phone (Lazaridis was adamant about this). In hindsight I wonder if either of these would have been better paths. I know a lot of people love the keyboards but could they really have withstood the Apple/Android juggernaut? Haven't used BBM - is there any merit in that strategy?

[Cheese]

I would have thought that not having enough Apps was their downfall...or so it appears to me. I liked the keyboard and many did. BBM sucked for me...hated it.

[Anduril]

Originally Posted by edslunch

According to the article there were two paths they didn't take - focusing on making BlackBerry Messenger a de facto industry standard alternative to SMS (Balsille quit when this was canned) and staying as a button phone (Lazaridis was adamant about this). In hindsight I wonder if either of these would have been better paths. I know a lot of people love the keyboards but could they really have withstood the Apple/Android juggernaut? Haven't used BBM - is there any merit in that strategy?

I can't imagine that having BBM as a main strategy would have done much in the end. Maybe they would have become the WhatsApp of today but ultimately a minor theoretical consolation.

Going with BB10 was the right choice in my opinion. It was just too, too late. Imagine comparing Ice Cream Sandwich to BB10. Sure it's an 'what if' situation, but at that point it's a much more even debate between the two.

[Azure]

Not surprising that the company is struggling so much when they can't even release BBM for iPhone and Android without screwing it up so badly.

Delayed again?

[Igster]

Originally Posted by Azure

Not surprising that the company is struggling so much when they can't even release BBM for iPhone and Android without screwing it up so badly.

Delayed again?

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Brutal. They really did this to themselves. Sucks people are losing their jobs, but this company is not very smart and never on time for anything. They kind of deserve what is happening as a company.

[19Yzerman19]

Well let's be fair, it's hard to expect anything to get released on time right now. Fundamental changes are happening within the organization, 40% of the company has been given walking papers, no kidding stuff is being delayed.

[fundmark19]

Originally Posted by 19Yzerman19

Well let's be fair, it's hard to expect anything to get released on time right now. Fundamental changes are happening within the organization, 40% of the company has been given walking papers, no kidding stuff is being delayed.

To be fair the release was before these people were to be let go. What is the excuse for every other product launch this company has done. They are late for everything this is just par for the course

[Azure]

You don't promise to release it, release it, then pull it back a few hours into the release because you weren't prepared for what happened.

BBM is the biggest thing Blackberry has going right now, and they still screw it up.