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Developers Defecting From BlackBerry
jfruhlinger writes "Mobile app developers who build for multiple platforms need to figure out how to conserve their resources somehow, and many are choosing to do so by not bothering to build apps for BlackBerry phones. It's a combination of declining market share and the general difficulty of building apps for the BlackBerry platform, one developer told Bloomberg: 'RIM brought in a touchscreen and mixed it with a thumbwheel, a keyboard and shortcut keys, it made it really difficult and expensive to develop across devices.'"
All thirteen of them said so.
I'd rather blame it on the perceived "air" around them. Blackberries have the "air" of being business-y and important, making the user some kind of nobility, while androids and iPhones have that stink of the commoner around them who uses it for petty games and enjoyment rather than important business.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm hearing through the grapevine that Blackberry's corporate position isn't all that secure either. I know of one medium-sized company that has been replacing Blackberries with iPhones, and talking to their tech guy, they may be shutting down their BES server this fall if all goes according to plan. Since integration into Exchange, which is the big deal, isn't all that hard any more, the limited lock in that RIM had is gone.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Considering that with the Playbook they added the ability to support apps written for Android
No, they said they PLAN to add that support. When it will be delivered? Who can say.
they could essentially decide to do the same for their phones.
For existing phones? The ones with no Android specific buttons? The ones that were never built intending to run Android?
No.
The reason all this matters is that there is no coherent story about BB development anywhere (since the tablets use Air and the phones do not), and what development was going on was with a nightmare API (I looked over it once to evaluate doing a port to BB and ran away).
Blackberry has the same problem Nokia did, BB is just much more entrenched and harder to shake loose. But they haven't done anything to firm up the grip they had, and when it goes it will go fast.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's not quite true. The BB is a secure smart-ish-phone which makes it ideal for corporate/government use. It's locked down and encrypted.
Don't get on your platform high horse or anything, something happening too often here (get off my lawn) but ...
Android isn't secure at all. Until Android phones start coming with hardware based encryption we can't use them, it basically rules them out at the first stage. People are pushing to use Android but it is a no go right now. Same for Windows Phone 7, no hardware encryption = no use, although no-one is pushing for WP7.
We're slowly moving to the iPhone 4 through Exchange and a MDM, people want to use the iPhone, we can configure it just as strongly as the BB and it has AES 256 hardware encryption. It's a win-win.
I haven't had a BlackBerry for a while now, but if I remember right, I may have kept an SSH client on there, and I think once I downloaded an Infocom player, just for fun. But overall, I just never considered downloading apps to be part of the BlackBerry experience. Maybe that's why I find the "DOODZ, WHERE DA APPS AT??" attitude of a lot of iPhone/Android users a little baffling. To me, BlackBerry's software was well-designed and reliable, and it allowed me to do pretty much everything I expect a communications device to do, so I couldn't really picture what else I'd need to downlaod. But then again, I guess to me, a mobile phone is something that spends most of its time in your pocket. That doesn't seem to be how a lot of phone users see it.
Breakfast served all day!
stick with blackberry, it's not going anywhere, yes they are loosing market "share" but only because the market is growing, BB total sales have continues to increase, but the smart-phone market has increased at a faster pace, hence the "loss" is no loss at all. It's just this crazy perception where only percentages count, not reality.
From an IT standpoint. Blackberry Enterprise sucks. Bailing on that is a must.
1. You need to install a server software to integrate with Exchange (unless you reroute all your email to some internet email service)
2. Not suppose to have Exchange and BES on the same server, so one more point of failure.
3. Said server requires....is it Java, Kerberos, and mixed Server OS environment combination that's broken? I don't know, I stopped trying to fix it. RIM didn't have a good explanation and their ultimate solution sucked.
4. Not fully integrated with Exchange, Exchange's mobile policy's don't push to it. Blackberry Server has it's own mobile policy I guess
Smartphones that talk to exchange are wham, bam, thank you ma'am. For BB, if you have the Java,Kerberos, mixed Server OS issue, you can't add new phones. If you can't get into your exchange server to do the MINOR configuration, you have bigger problems then not adding a new phone.
The only thing I wish they'd port to Exchange-capable phones is, RIM doing token/serialized authentication, removing the need to redo password on the phone each time it's changed.
In other words, you haven't read any documentation on the BB environment. Besides, BES supports more Exchange features than ActiveSync. And yes, BlackBerries have their own policy settings separate of Exchange with much, MUCH more control over the devices. This is something you would know if you would have actually read something about the BB platform.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
FYI. Here is a screenshot of Angry Birds on Blackberry.
As you point out it isn't the "DOODZ, WHERE DA APPS AT??" that will kill RIM, sadly it is RIM itself. If you look at their competitors all treat their phones as a platform. You get X amount of support, you can update from OS # to OS #1 or whatever, the whole thing is treated as a platform.
RIM on the other hand goes "Oh look, here is our new phone! It isn't compatible with our old phone OS, and BTW we won't be updating squat on the last model (even if it came out yesterday) because we have a new model! Buy it now!" and frankly folks just ain't gonna go for that anymore. People want their phones to at least be treated as current for the life of their contracts, they don't want to feel abandoned three months after getting the thing yet that is EXACTLY what RIM has been doing.
So if you want to know who killed RIM, that would be RIM. My prediction? When their share price gets low enough they will be bought by MSFT and be replaced by a WinPhone Corporate Edition. MSFT has experience with businesses, it'll integrate with AD, and RIM still has plenty of patents that would look good in the MSFT war chest. So final total...Google and Apple trading one and two, MSFT/Nokia in third, everyone else toast.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.