RIM CEO Says Company 'Seriously' Considered Switch To Android

zacharye writes "RIM CEO Thorsten Heins's interview with the Telegraph on Thursday made headlines for his admission that the company can't keep up with Apple and Samsung without outside help. But there's another interesting nugget buried within the interview that didn't get quite as much attention: Heins says that RIM took a long, hard look at migrating to Android before deciding to plow forward with BlackBerry 10. Heins said, 'We took the conscious decision not to go Android. If you look at other suppliers’ ability to differentiate, there’s very little wiggle room. We looked at it seriously — but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base: it’s all about getting stuff done. Games, media, we have to be good at it, but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content — if you stay true to that purpose you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can’t do it on a me-too approach.'"

Comments

That *niche* market.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Well, if it wants a small userbase of executives, it has to accept that small revenue stream comming from those people.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

Blackberry could have survived as the business market's option. The security they once offered was unmatched.

But now we even see RIM migrating away from what little they are good at by giving away their keys to oppressive governments in order to continue doing business in that country. RIM is feeding itself by cutting off its own appendages.

I don't think Android is going to catch on in the business world. We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower. (The nuances in that discussion don't matter, the fact is that the market sees IOS as safer than Android. Perception is reality)

It's unfortunate that RIM decided to commit corporate suicide because the market has lost something that was once good. Consumers now have fewer choices, and that's bad.

Re:That *niche* market.

[dkleinsc]

We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower.

Actually, what I can almost guarantee happened is that some executive with no technical background whatsoever said "I love my iPhone, it's so shiny!", and the bit about security and malware was made up to justify that.

Re:That *niche* market.

[ceoyoyo]

"The security they once offered was unmatched."

Bull. The very fact that RIM CAN give away the keys to governments (or whoever they like) means their security wasn't very good. Not nearly as good as what you can get yourself with encrypted IMAP/SMTP and/or VPN on an iPhone or Android.

RIM offered a moderately nice install-it-and-it-works package along with some sweetheart deals with carriers back when data service was a strange concept. Then the reigning champion of install-it-and-it-works walked on the scene and RIM just kept on doing what they'd been doing, with a little bit of me too thrown in. Now a child can set up real e-mail security and RIM really doesn't offer anything, except maybe an existing user base for BBM.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

Nope, the decision was made solely in IT by the desktop/device/network arch staff.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

I will also add:

It was once said, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".

Today, nobody ever gets fired for choosing Apple.

Re:That *niche* market.

[AchilleTalon]

Indeed! RIM had a niche market, however they want everything without giving anything and this is their main problem.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

and iOS was found MORE secure?

Good luck with that...

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

The nuances in that discussion don't matter, the fact is that the market sees IOS as safer than Android. Perception is reality

And in this case, the nuance is that the perception is actually based on reality.

Re:That *niche* market.

[datavirtue]

Yeah.....perception is reality. Perception of security is safety. Let us know how that turns out.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Walled gardens aren't always bad.

Re:That *niche* market.

[alphax45]

RIM can give away the BIS (Blackberry Internet Service - used by a non-corporate person in most cases) keys because those servers are operated by the carriers. BESs (Blackberry Enterprise Servers) are owned/operated by a company and RIM does NOT ever have the keys to give away. So the corporate customers using a BES are safe from the governments that have been the keys, Joe Blow on the street is not.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

and iOS was found MORE secure?

Good luck with that...

I believe it. iOS might not be the best, but it's pretty good when you just want to get business done. It's easy to setup, easy to control, and Apple is pretty good at keeping people/Apps/permissions under control. Plus, every iPhone works pretty much the same regardless of model.

Some androids are easy to root, some are hard - some are easy to control, some are not. Some models are good, some aren't.

I personally like Android as a geek and and someone who isn't exactly pro-Apple - but I hated supporting Android and led the push for an easier iPhone/iPad environment. I'd never go back

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know iOS is pretty secure.

Re:That *niche* market.

[candeoastrum]

I will also add:

It was once said, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".

Today, nobody ever gets fired for choosing Apple.

I dont know anyone in business who has chosen Apple for the enterprise so I am not sure how that applies. Consumer devices that they personally own and bring in, yes. I can't think of another scenario where people recommend Apple for servers or clients when its actually purchased by the business.

Re:That *niche* market.

[vux984]

Bull. The very fact that RIM CAN give away the keys to governments (or whoever they like) means their security wasn't very good.

You don't know what you are talking about.

They gave away the keys to BIS. That's the service they HOST THEMSELVES used mostly by individuals and small companies who don't want to host their own server. Of course they have the keys for it.

BES (blackberry enterprise server) is the enterprise service. Enterprises run their own BES on their own hardware under their own control. RIM doesn't touch it. RIM hasn't (and can't) give away the BES keys because the enterprise has them not RIM.

But complaining about RIM having the keys to BIS is as foolish as complaining google has access to the encryption keys to https://www.gmail.com/

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that Android plus BBM and BES alone would have been a compelling product - versus years of vapourware that is BBOS 10...

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower.

Actually, what I can almost guarantee happened is that some executive with no technical background whatsoever said "I love my iPhone, it's so shiny!", and the bit about security and malware was made up to justify that.

Who voted this informative?

Re:That *niche* market.

[MachDelta]

Only when you're the one holding the keys to the garden...

Re:That *niche* market.

[LordLimecat]

Blackberry could have survived as the business market's option. The security they once offered was unmatched.

IS unmatched. BES STILL has no real rival in terms of security; the second best uses SSL, which has widely reported problems and can be exploited by anyone with a root CA cert unless you take pains to remove all the default trusts from your devices. BES on the otherhand remains about as unhackable as you can be, using symetrical encryption with securely exchanged, privately held, per-device keys.

But now we even see RIM migrating away from what little they are good at by giving away their keys to oppressive governments in order to continue doing business in that country. RIM is feeding itself by cutting off its own appendages.

Youre buying into the ignorantly published FUD. RIM gave away BIS keys; they do not and never will have access to the BES keys. If you are a business operating on BIS, yea, android would be about 100x better since youre basically doing a ghetto version of POP over ActiveSync, and adding a zillion middlemen to the equation to boot. NOONE seriously considers BIS for business use; it has awful security, manageability, and reliability, and it is not the reason anyone chooses a blackberry.

I don't think Android is going to catch on in the business world.

Ill second that, but not for the reason you state. The issue is that the market is currently demanding media consumption devices, which Blackberries are generally terrible at; and theyre demanding touch devices, which Blackberries are latecommers to.

The problem is that neither of those criteria are really relevant to "business communicator", and I personally think "touchscreen" is mutually exclusive with "efficient at business communication" except in a few cases (like the Ill-fated Pre, which had an awesome interface and an awesome keyboard). I have an android-- Motorola Admiral-- and honestly I am not impressed. As slow as Blackberries could be at times, they NEVER missed a keystroke on the keyboard and I could ALWAYS initiate a phone call with 3 button presses without looking. My android does many things, but utterly fails with the hardware keyboard and initiating a call can be a frustrating experience if you dont devote your attention to the touchscreen.

Basically, Im part of a niche market that actually wants a business communicator and NOT a media consumption device, and that market is dying; but its still a market that RIM is king of.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I'm not familar with BES. How does one get the Key? Is it generated on the device? Is the device open source,so I can verify tha the keys are not transmited after generation? Can I buy a HSA plugin module from a third party of my choice, that ensures the key cannot be pulled from the device?

Re:That *niche* market.

[tom229]

I seriously died a little inside reading this. You guys should consider firing your entire IT staff.. like... yesterday.

Almost every company I know of has standardized to android recently. The wide range of price points for their devices is a big drawing factor and with a proper MDM and/or google apps infrastructure they are far more secure than iPhones.

Re:That *niche* market.

[LordLimecat]

Does android have a way to restrict what apps can be put on it yet? Ditto question with IOS.

Honest question, Im a huge RIM fan but would love to know if ActiveSync can be similarly locked down as thats where people are headed.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that RIM can give keys away says NOTHING about security.

That's like saying SSH is insecure because I can GIVE my keys away. Or that OpenVPN has no security because I could generate keys for everyone.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or start handing them out to governments.

Hi RIMM!

Re:That *niche* market.

[GodfatherofSoul]

I think the point he's making is that the channels aren't "double blind"; e.g. like a hashed-salted password.

Re:That *niche* market.

[nighthawk243]

Eh... we're a business (a major federal contractor, actually) and we use only Android devices. They're secure enough if you take the proper precautions and have the necessary sync policies enforced (We require a PIN, we can also wipe lost/stolen devices). The only people who use iOS here are execs that insist on using their personal iPhone for business.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tom229]

With android and ios you need a third party MDM (mobile device management) server to implement a security policy. With an MDM you can certainly restrict apps. Also if your company uses google apps instead of exchange there is some light security policy stuff for mobile phones including application auditing... it only works really well with android though.

Re:That *niche* market.

[jedidiah]

The sounds a lot like having your own package repositories and excluding the vendor ones.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

They gave away the keys to BIS.

Oh that's fine then, given that covers the majority of users ( non-corporate ) and the most innovative small companies.

Do you honestly not see that as a problem?

Re:That *niche* market.

[luis_a_espinal]

and iOS was found MORE secure?

Good luck with that...

Elaborate. Elaborate precisely.

<necessary preemptive strike against slashdot fanbois>
And no. I'm not an iPhone fanboi. I'm actually an Android user.
</necessary preemptive strike against slashdot fanbois>

Geek, nerds, technocrats, whatever, they should be able to make statements like this immediately followed by a list comparing both platforms, followed by the most objective conclusion possible. Anything else is just hand-waving bull-crap more appropriate for technically-challenged marketing types than for the supposedly tech-oriented crowd that comes to these interweebz realms.

Re:That *niche* market.

[jedidiah]

We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower.

Actually, what I can almost guarantee happened is that some executive with no technical background whatsoever said "I love my iPhone, it's so shiny!", and the bit about security and malware was made up to justify that.

Who voted this informative?

Just about any IT professional.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical. No input from the people who will need to use the device.

Re:That *niche* market.

[luis_a_espinal]

We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower.

Actually, what I can almost guarantee happened is that some executive with no technical background whatsoever said "I love my iPhone, it's so shiny!", and the bit about security and malware was made up to justify that.

Who voted this informative?

Sadly, the /. crowd who think mindless dilbertian generalizations and overly abused cliches constitute statements of truth.

Re:That *niche* market.

[FranTaylor]

Good grief, man, a corporation can compile their entire own android stack from scratch and put quite precisely and exactly only the software that they want on the phone.

You can't do that with Apple or Microsoft.

Re:That *niche* market.

[vux984]

Oh that's fine then, given that covers the majority of users ( non-corporate ) and the most innovative small companies.

Again, this is no different or worse than any other hosted service.

If you are using hosted exchange, your host has the keys. If you are using hosted encrypted IMAP your host has the keys. If you run everything through a VPN host, your VPN host has the keys.

Do you honestly not see that as a problem?

No, if you truly care about security you self host, because everyone knows that if you use a hosted service the host has the keys.

Re:That *niche* market.

[EGSonikku]

Because doing all that is easy?

Re:That *niche* market.

[hairyfeet]

I don't think it would have helped friend, RIM made the classic tech mistake of sitting on ass for too long with their designs while everyone passed them by. We saw the same thing at Palm where they sat on the older designs long after they had been made to look like dinosaurs and by the time they decided to come out with something that was really new nobody cared.

At one time as you pointed out RIM was THE business phone but while the stupid security moves hurt it ultimately I think its the simple fact their designs have been behind the curve for too long. Lets face it, for a long while a blackberry was a blackberry, just nothing new or exciting there.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Vancorps]

I definitely know people that were fired for buying Apple XServe. The company is unapologetic in their apathy towards supporting enterprise demands.

Re:That *niche* market.

[ceoyoyo]

LARGE enterprises run their own BES.

"RIM hasn't (and can't) give away the BES keys because the enterprise has them not RIM."

Are you sure? What's to stop RIM from putting in their own backdoor? The security from a system like that is necessarily LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO, not MORE THAN (as the GP claimed) any other solution you install yourself. If you use a closed VPN or sIMAP server you get approximately equal security, if you use an open one you get better security.

"But complaining about RIM having the keys to BIS is as foolish as complaining google has access to the encryption keys to https://www.gmail.com/ [gmail.com]"

Not foolish at all. I don't use gmail for anything sensitive either (and I work in health research, so I do actually send sensitive data occasionally). In fact, it's contrary to US, European, Canadian and international law to use gmail for certain things, BECAUSE Google has the encryption keys.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like a fairly advanced case of Apple Derangement Syndrome. Meanwhile, in the real world, the company I'm consulting for picked the iOS ecosystem (iPads, iPod touches, and iPhones with custom software) for a lot of reasons, none of which involved shininess or executive mandates. (If they listened to the suits, they would be using blackberries). There were a couple hardcore penguins in the decision committee that were pushing android but they also wanted to buy used phones on ebay, root them, and install a custom android build. One of them resigned in protest when they decided on iOS. A few weeks later he was arrested in a catch-a-predator type sting, so it was probably for the best.

Re:That *niche* market.

[randy of the redwood]

Bravo. Well said.

Can someone who is better at wordsmithing than I please come up with a meme that says we would all appreciate it if you only post when you actually know something about the subject?

Sorry to get off topic, but in the past year it seems that the people who post here are more armchair quarterbacks than actually in the field with something intelligent to add. Is this the Reddit crowd coming over here?

If you have something to add, please do so, but try to include some facts with the post instead of just "IOS is more secure" or "Good luck with that".

Re:That *niche* market.

[mellyra]

As far as I know iOS is pretty secure.

as far as I know, finding an iOS exploit in the wild is one google search for "iOS jailbreak" away...

Re:That *niche* market.

[vux984]

I think the point he's making is that the channels aren't "double blind"; e.g. like a hashed-salted password.

I don't think your password example really fits, but I get your point.

But he criticised BIS with the phrase "their security isn't very good" while suggesting SSL enabled SMTP/IMAP is "far superior". That is plainly ignorant or dishonest.

Encrypted IMAP/SMTP certainly isn't "double blind". And unless you are self hosting the mail server, and only send to recipients on that mail server it has FAR FAR more trust issues and vulnerable points than pin-pin messages over BIS.

So, with that as context, I remain convinced the poster I was responding to had no idea what he was talking about.

Realistically the only way to do better than BIS is to self-host. BIS is as good as a hosted service can be.

If we -wanted- a double-blind 3rd party hosted communications channel -- the only way it would ever be truly blind to the host would require an out of band key exchange with your intended recipient -- and that's hard to do.

And even then the host would know who and when you were communicating. To beat even that then you need out of band key exchange with the recipient, a decentralized p2p service like tor for message transit, and to generate noise traffic on all endpoints to ensure the carriers/ISPs can't pinpoint communications based purely on traffic timing analysis.

You aren't going to get all that from a simple "hosted service".

Re:That *niche* market.

[afidel]

Yes, it's called a mobile device management platform. There are a variety of options for both iOS and Android (often they support both). Personally I think the future is going to be Android VM's, you'll have a personal profile and a corporate profile, each with their own apps and data and they only thing they will share is the hardware. VMWare already has such a product but it only runs on a small handful of smartphones, I think eventually it will get added to stock Android.

Re:That *niche* market.

[PNutts]

I hate to post this again but I feel obliged to correct misinformation. The Apple Configurator implements security policies and restricts features and apps. No server required.

Re:That *niche* market.

[PNutts]

...and with a proper MDM and/or google apps infrastructure they are far more secure than iPhones.

How so?

Re:That *niche* market.

[Barsteward]

Actually, what I can almost guarantee happened is that IT kiss-ass knows his executes say "I love my iPhone, it's so shiny!", and the bit about security and malware was made up to justify that...

Being shiny is the only reason to choose Apple over RIM in the corporate world

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Enterprise/Consumer is irrelevant.

It applies as it's an example of taking the safe route that is guaranteed to not get you fired because a stakeholder chose/supports it. It *won't* get you the best solution or maybe even a good one but you will keep your job, even if the project bombs, because 'nobody could reasonably foresee that an IBM/Apple solution would fail'. ;-) If you take a flyer on a new or small vendor and they fail or vanish, management will blame you for recommending a non-top-tier vendor.

In many shops this bias to top-tier vendors is institutionalized -- you are not allowed to consider anything else. The 'top-tier' vendors encourage this by spreading FUD about working with small vendors.

If you want to get anywhere in IT you pick your battles, particularly with management. Sometimes you need to give them what they want.

Also, xserves were useful for certain niches. I bought a couple about 5 years ago and they worked fine for their intended purposes (1 directory server in a mac shop + 1 HPC head-node on our cluster). That said, if money had been an issue, I would have done it with a FOSS solution.

Re:That *niche* market.

[93 Escort Wagon]

BES (blackberry enterprise server) is the enterprise service. Enterprises run their own BES on their own hardware under their own control. RIM doesn't touch it. RIM hasn't (and can't) give away the BES keys because the enterprise has them not RIM.

Apparently there's some debate regarding if that's true or not.

Re:That *niche* market.

[FireFury03]

I believe it. iOS might not be the best, but it's pretty good when you just want to get business done.

iOS devices are one of the most problematic devices that we have to support. These are some of the problems we have had with them:

1. The web proxy server settings are all centralised on the device, which is a really good design. Unfortunately, many (most?) iOS apps seem to ignore them.
2. Many apps don't support authenticated web proxies.
3. Of the apps that do support authenticated web proxies, most of them do their own authentication (i.e. you open the browser and get asked to authenticate and can then browse without any more problems... but then you go to another app and have to auth again because the browser and the other app don't share the same authentication credential store. Then you open another app and have to auth *again*.
4. The iCloud stuff can't handle HTTP errors it didn't expect. If the iOS device tries to contact the iCloud servers and the web proxy returns a 407 (not authorised), the device just blindly tries again immediately (without supplying any authentication credentials). On networks where our customers have decided to severely restrict internet access (we supply systems to schools, who often put up very restrictive controls on their internet connections at certain times of the day), we frequently see the iOS devices hammering away at the proxy with repeated attempts to contact Apple's servers; we're talking hundreds of requests per second for hours on end - the batteries on these dumb devices can't last long with that kind of behaviour.

Notably, Apple seems to have a general habit of many of these things - much of their OS X software also has terrible support for authenticated web proxies, and iChat has a well known bug similar to (4) that results in it fighting with remote XMPP clients if they return a (legal) response it doesn't like - I tend to see constant network traffic totalling about 3Kbps per paid of fighting clients, and they do it even when not in a conversation.

Some models are good, some aren't.

Well, what is "good" often depends on what use you want to put it to. I can point at a lot of devices (running any of the OSes), which I regard as "not good", whilst other people will regard them as "good" because they happen to fit with their usage best. This is the benefit of choice, and is something you don't get with the iOS devices.

Re:That *niche* market.

[nitehawk214]

I will also add:

It was once said, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".

Today, nobody ever gets fired for choosing Apple.

I dont know anyone in business who has chosen Apple for the enterprise so I am not sure how that applies. Consumer devices that they personally own and bring in, yes. I can't think of another scenario where people recommend Apple for servers or clients when its actually purchased by the business.

Easy, nobody chooses Apple for an entire enterprise, so nobody can get fired for doing it. Now choosing IOS as a standardized phone platform... well I suppose this is no more inappropriate than choosing Microsoft.

Besides it doesn't matter what platform you use for mobile, if the people setting it up are morons it will be insecure.

I can remember working a company when my manger rushed over to my desk in a panic, waving his blackberry in my face. "OMG, OMG, our internal development server is open to the public! Do something! Do something, right now!"

I looked at it, and learned every BB at the company had a giant unsecured backdoor to the internal network, with no additional security or password needed. When I pointed this out I was quashed because the execs could not live without their blackberries. I explained there must be some way for them to see some internal apps and not others, or require some kind of network password. I have no idea if that hole was ever patched.

Re:That *niche* market.

[BlueBlade]

Am I the only one who "heard" this post with Charlie Brown's voice? Probably. Funny nonetheless.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Props for that. Charlie Brown has never made me laugh but your comment did.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

They can also save an assload of money on development and just buy something that does what they want out of the box.

Re:That *niche* market.

[vux984]

LARGE enterprises run their own BES

And small ones run BES Express. Lots of them do it.

Are you sure? What's to stop RIM from putting in their own backdoor?

What's to stop any software you use from putting in their own backdoor? So, sure, I'll stipulate that its possible... in any hosted/proprietary system. Including the alternatives.

? The security from a system like that is necessarily LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO, not MORE THAN (as the GP claimed) any other solution you install yourself. If you use a closed VPN or sIMAP server you get approximately equal security,

If you use a closed VPN or sIMAP server you get approximately equal security, if you use an open one you get better security.

Apples to Oranges, and security is only half the concern - reliability is the other half.

The use case for BIS and the "problem" it posed the Indian government was that two *unrelated* users could each go buy a blackberry independantly and with no setup or coordination exchange messages securely.

Criminals didn't have to build, manage, and self-host systems and then also manage secure interconnects between them. All of which would still have been vulnerable government seizure within the country, interpol seizure in many other places, and if nothing else they could disrupt the network by blacklisting the ip addresses of the international entities hosting the service at the national edge routers.

This was pretty much where things were headed with BIS - India was threatening to block it outright.

Now, I challenge you to build a secure open source network and connect to it from inside the borders of a country where the government is intent on intercepting communications, or if that is not possible disrupting the network so that it can't be used at all. For bonus points also make it zero configuration for end users.

That was pretty much BIS in India. The governement couldn't tap it. Blocking it outright was a nuclear scale measure because it was used massively by legimate users. And all you needed to do to use it was "buy a blackberry" setting the bar for criminals to use it effectively extremely low.

Nothing you could construct could even come close. Sure you may be able to setup a secure VPN and mail server...and be safe from borderline conspiracy theory back doors. But so what? A couple phone calls and either your server is in custody or it can't be reached from inside the country. Sure you could play some fancy games with international vpns and proxies but the bar to use this system would have been raised massively. You think every drug dealer and small time fence in the country would be on that system?

Not foolish at all. I don't use gmail for anything sensitive either (and I work in health research, so I do actually send sensitive data occasionally). In fact, it's contrary to US, European, Canadian and international law to use gmail for certain things, BECAUSE Google has the encryption keys.

You missed the point. I didn't say it was foolish to note that a given host had the encryption keys. I said it was foolish to complain about a given host when ALL HOSTS work exactly the same way.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

I think that was another issue. If we had iPhone 3GS's still around, we'd probably be fine because they run the latest OS. By choosing Android devices, we'd have people on numerous standard devices that may or may not support any of the same versions of Android today, and will probably not in the future.

IOS devices would probably have a longer service life, which is important when you consider most people are toting around Blackberry Curve 8310s.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

There was, I just didn't mention it. The community was very much in favor of Apple, because they're not techies and either have experience with apple, or think "Hey, they might give me an iPhone!"

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

I dont know anyone in business who has...

so I am not sure how that applies.

Those two statements are inexorably linked.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

An important factor is whether the devices will be company-purchased or BYOD, and you're just choosing a standard platform.

Re:That *niche* market.

[tripleevenfall]

In business sometimes it's the right time to shut up, sometimes it's the right time to make your point, sometimes it's right to fight for it, and sometimes you'd better get of the tracks before the train comes through.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Vintermann]

Oh, I believe it. Our sysadmin wanted to go with Windows phones, and my boss with Java ME.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Vintermann]

For a large enough company, it's probably worth it. And there's no reason why Android handset makers, or specialised companies, shouldn't offer this service.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Vintermann]

Maybe not on the end-user end. I think there's some risk of getting fired if you insist that your servers and embedded devices run Apple software.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Sylak]

As far as I know iOS is pretty secure.

as far as I know, finding an iOS exploit in the wild is one google search for "iOS jailbreak" away...

And there hasn't been a remote jailbreak exploit for iOS since a Zero Day for iOS 4. Every jailbreak since has required you to have USB access to the device

Re:That *niche* market.

[vux984]

Apparently there's some debate regarding if that's true or not.

To which I'd reply
http://crackberry.com/rim-encryption-keys

I don't dispute there is some debate. But at this point I have no reason to doubt RIM, and think it is probably sensationalist headline grabbing... or just outright bad journalism.

But given that all other corporate email systems... whether its exchange or dovecot or scalix or lotus notes all offer handset to corporate server encryption the whole notion that RIM would even be expected to be able to do this difficult to accept.

I am definitely interested in knowing the truth. But I think the burden of proof lies squarely with those asserting its even possible to intercept BES communications.

Re:That *niche* market.

[narcc]

That's "the security they STILL offer is unmatched"

Again, BES users are completely unaffected. RIM can't give the keys away because they don't have them!

Re:That *niche* market.

[ceoyoyo]

"when ALL HOSTS work exactly the same way."

And thus my point. The Blackberry system ranges from not very secure at all to almost as good as you could get making your own. It certainly isn't "unmatched."

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't perform encryption with a hash, salted or not. It is only good for digital signatures, file verification and passwords. (Maybe there are other uses, but my point still stands.)

Blackberrys encrypt communications using a known public key before transmission. The private half of this keypair is stored on the server, either RIM's or an enterprise's. The only entity which can then read the contents is the holder of the private key. If you do not run a private BES server, then yes, RIM can decrypt anything you send and so can any authority that RIM chooses to give the private key to. If you run your own BES server, then RIM have no say in the matter.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, RIM could easily add in a backdoor that allows them remote access to your keys. A backdoor could also exist in an open source mail server as well, as upstream repositories get hacked more often than I'd like. Have you audited every line of code in the mail software you run? The big difference is that you have a legally binding agreement between RIM and your company, so if you ever found out that they were stealing your keys, you cry foul and let the world know about it, then sue. I don't know what is in the RIM agreement, but I'm pretty sure if it had a clause stating that they could read all of your encrypted messages it would be a very big deal since security is really their only selling point.

Re:That *niche* market.

[vux984]

The Blackberry system ranges from not very secure at all to almost as good as you could get making your own.

We talking BES or are we talking BIS?

BES

The base security model is as good as anything you can do rolling your own server using proprietary software. But the handset management and controls are unmatched. iphone or android + some linux server at the backend with SSL enabled isn't even in the same league. Sure they both do end-to-end email encryption, but that's about where the comparison ends. You cannot lock down and manage ios (or android) to anywhere near the same degree, unless your 'make your own' includes providing your own secure managed handset operating system... Android could be the basis for one but to my knowledge the 'community' has so far only focussed more on defeating carrier restrictions to open the platform up, not to deliver enhanced security and IT policy controls. You can't compare BB/BES to a theoretical open source handset OS that doesn't actually exist. Thus: BES is unmatched.

BIS
BIS is better than what you can accomplish with other handsets using a hosted 3rd party solution. The security is just as good as any other hosted solution -- but any two unrelated BIS users can communicate securely with no coordination.

If your a drug dealer, how do you communicate securely with your contacts? Do you setup a linux server with SSL and then setup accounts for all your customers and distributors?... And run a help desk to provide them support when they have trouble sending messages?

BIS gave them all that. Admittedly as a hosted service it was always known that RIM in Canada had the keys... and you had to trust them. And kudos to RIM for holding out as long as it did. And by making this a very public argument, RIM may ultimately have given keys to india, but at least the consumers aren't being decieved. Unlike say the secret NSA closet at your local ISP.

Re:That *niche* market.

[LordLimecat]

Can it be done without ActiveSync? How are the policies managed and deployed?

Re:That *niche* market.

[FranTaylor]

No, it's hard, which is why companies like RIM can do it.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Ohrion]

Unfortunately issues 1-3 exist on Android as well. Nearly exactly the same in fact.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a BS. Management will give me strange looks if I ever suggest Apple for company use, not that I would mind you. It is probably the same in most moderatly sized companies.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Lemmy Caution]

They're very committed to supporting the enterprise. As long at that enterprise trades as AAPL.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is funny, as my company just purchased Android phones for all 600+ of us based on how much ridiculously easier it is to access a lost/stolen iPhone.

Re:That *niche* market.

[farble1670]

The nuances in that discussion don't matter, the fact is that the market sees IOS as safer than Android. Perception is reality

perception is reality? what is that some kind of truism for morons?

yes, the same market that fills the enterprise with malware ridden virus plugged windows boxes, right? android as an OS is orders of magnitude more secure by design that windows, mac, or linux. yeah that's right i said mac and linux, because there's no sudo / root / admin account on android (yes i know you can go out of your way to root an android device).

We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower

you think that was it? or do you think you had a bunch of apple users that didn't want to change and were looking for reasons to hold on to their iDevices?

Re:That *niche* market.

[farble1670]

theoretically, but no they can't do that in reality. you are talking about a massive resource and support effort. and of course, that locks all your users into the devices you support, each of which requires significantly more effort to work out the quirks of the particular devices.

users would soon be pissed, because unless you keep growing the team that manages all this, they will be restricted to old devices. oh, and they are also pissed because you are late upgrading them to the latest android version.

folks like to look at cyanogenmod and say "oh, easy!". well, if CM doesn't work or crashes, people say oh well and avoid the crashing behavior or flash something else. if you are an enterprise and a user reports this, you can't say that. you have to support them, at massive cost.

Re:That *niche* market.

[hobarrera]

Basically, all that can be cut down to "Bad support for authenticated proxies". Maybe you need to re-evaluate why you need that proxy in the first place. It's not like a non-transparent proxy adds any real value over transparent proxies, and if you want to filter out people from your network, just use 802.1X.

Re:That *niche* market.

[hobarrera]

I think any corporation that picks Android would only give their employees on or two models to pick from, such a huge variety.

Re:That *niche* market.

[PNutts]

Yes Direct connection, email, post to website, or MDM.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because every corporation wants the added cost of having to hire a team of Android developers to create custom mobile software for their organization.

Myopia induced by technical fluency is why Android is the choice of forever alone nerds and iOS will continue to make headway into the corporate environment.

Enjoy your faggot cream sandwich! :-D

Re:That *niche* market.

[thsths]

> I think any corporation that picks Android would only give their employees on or two models to pick from

In fact as a corporation, you actually have little choice but to specify the Nexus range (or rather model). Nothing to chose from, but you know that you get at least a minimum of support. No other Android model currently offers that promise - and if you ask me, that is the problem of Android in a nut shell.

Don't get me wrong, the Galaxy Nexus is great device, but it is no Galaxy SIII, and it is certainly not a "one size fits all" device.

Re:That *niche* market.

[jonbryce]

Easier than writing a complete new operating system.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Asic Eng]

What I don't understand from that is, why they don't put BES on top of their own line of Android phones. They are going after a niche with that service, so why not piggy-back on Android with that? As it is they now have to match all the other features Android and iOS have, and somehow get a comparable selection of apps - but with only a fraction of a market share. I don't think they can achieve that.

Customers won't be willing to carry two devices, and they won't be willing to lose out on all the features they can have with modern smart phones either.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good grief, man, a corporation can compile their entire own android stack from scratch and put quite precisely and exactly only the software that they want on the phone.

You can't do that with Apple or Microsoft.

Nor should you, because it's a huge waste of time and resources.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah didn't you know? you just press the Command Key, the Shift Key and the QQ Key....

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

that's an invalid HTML tag.

Re:That *niche* market.

[mjwx]

Nope, the decision was made solely in IT by the desktop/device/network arch staff.

Actually the decision was made by management. Simply parroted by IT because they're afraid for their jobs.

A few months back I quit a company that went hard into IOS beleiving it was "the future". All the management bought it, I was given the choice to leave or adopt IOS (which included carrying an Iphone). I chose to leave and went on an extended holiday to SE Asia. Whilst in Chang Mai, I learned the company had failed badly. Upon returning to Australia I found out they had be adsorbed by NEC and sacked half the staff.

Re:That *niche* market.

[murphtall]

So. If you don't need web proxies all your problems vanish. Neat...

Re:That *niche* market.

[FireFury03]

It's not like a non-transparent proxy adds any real value over transparent proxies

Yes, they do - transparent proxies cant authenticate users. We do use transparent proxying in situations where authentication isn't required (or to provide restricted network access to certain broken software that can't handle proxies correctly)

if you want to filter out people from your network, just use 802.1X.

802.1x largely provides per-machine auth rather than per-user, requires a much more complex setup and more hardware. A proxy is a more drop-in-and-go solution that tends to Just Work with most software.

Re:That *niche* market.

[FireFury03]

So. If you don't need web proxies all your problems vanish. Neat...

Most large organisations use web proxies...

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much, yeah?

Re:That *niche* market.

[hobarrera]

It's not like a non-transparent proxy adds any real value over transparent proxies

Yes, they do - transparent proxies cant authenticate users. We do use transparent proxying in situations where authentication isn't required (or to provide restricted network access to certain broken software that can't handle proxies correctly)

My point is: what's the use of authenticating proxies? Why do you need them? What value do they provide?

if you want to filter out people from your network, just use 802.1X.

802.1x largely provides per-machine auth rather than per-user, requires a much more complex setup and more hardware. A proxy is a more drop-in-and-go solution that tends to Just Work with most software.

802.11+802.1X isn't per-machine. The same username+password can be used simultaneously on different devices. We use this at work/university/home.
I fail to see how it requires more hardware than an authenticating proxy.

My final point is: what value does an authenticating proxy add to the network? Do you give some users internet acces and not others? Do you need to account internet traffic (excluding intranet traffic)?

A proxy isn't "drop-in-and-go" solution; this thread started on that very specific point: you need every application to support it, and for all application to somehow share settings. While 802.1X is done at an OS level, so you don't need to verify each app to make sure it works properly. The each-application-authenticates-using-shared-credentials is simply bad design if you can have the computer authenticate once.

Re:That *niche* market.

[Anonymous Coward]

I could be wrong, but I believe at one point the NSA released the source code of a version of Froyo that was certified for their internal use which was VERY thoroughly secured. I believe that's as close as you can get to your "theoretical open source handset OS."

Re:That *niche* market.

[FireFury03]

My point is: what's the use of authenticating proxies? Why do you need them? What value do they provide?

They allow a reasonably drop-in style way of providing per-user restrictions on web access.

802.11+802.1X isn't per-machine. The same username+password can be used simultaneously on different devices. We use this at work/university/home.
I fail to see how it requires more hardware than an authenticating proxy.

Ok, take an existing network. It may have a combination of managed and unmanaged switches, or maybe all unmanaged (it is extremely rare to find a network that has nothing but managed switches throughout). So in order to do 802.1x we first have to replace all the unmanaged switches with managed ones capable of 802.1x - that's a big stack of new hardware right there.

Now, once a client has authenticated, (AFAIK) the only way their traffic can be tied back to them is by comparing the MAC address they are using against the detail that was stored through RADIUS when they authenticated. If there are any routers on the network you're SOL since those routers will replace the source MAC on the packets. This makes doing per-user filtering in a central location a problem (and yes, there are ways around this - I imagine WCCP would work, but the configuration is a *lot* more complex than just dropping a proxy in to the network, and is probably going to involve replacing routers as well as switches).

My final point is: what value does an authenticating proxy add to the network? Do you give some users internet acces and not others? Do you need to account internet traffic (excluding intranet traffic)?

All of the above: My customers need to restrict web access differently for various groups of user. For example, staff often have reasonably lax filtering that just helps to prevent the "accidentally stumbling across porn infront of a class of kids" situation, 6th form kids have slightly stricter filtering, younger kids have more filtering. Often these filtering rules are set up to automatically change based on the time of day - it is common for kids to be allowed access to facebook during break times but not during classes. It is also important to be able to provide per-user accounting information and our customers also have the ability to apply a quota to each user's web access.

A proxy isn't "drop-in-and-go" solution; this thread started on that very specific point: you need every application to support it, and for all application to somehow share settings.

Well, yes it is largely a drop-in-and-go solution, at least more than other options. Most software does support it, and on desktops the user doesn't usually even need to manually authenticate (this is handled by NTLM or Kerberos usually). Settings regarding which proxy to use can usually be set globally (e.g. Windows Active Directory allows this, or by using WPAD).

While 802.1X is done at an OS level, so you don't need to verify each app to make sure it works properly. The each-application-authenticates-using-shared-credentials is simply bad design if you can have the computer authenticate once.

Doing this stuff at the OS level would certainly be nice, but does greatly increase the complexity of retrofitting systems to existing networks. If you were building the whole network from the ground up then it'd work well, but telling a customer that in order to use our software they need to replace all their switches and routers isn't going to result in a lot of sales.

Seriously

[postmortem]

You failed as CEO. Google gives you all apps for multimedia, so you don't have to do anything there. But they give you 0 enterprise apps, so that is what you could have done. Its not like corporations are going to pirate your apps and risk being sued.

Re:Seriously

[jhoegl]

So, the "Corporate Sync" available on all Android phones is not an enterprise app?

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. And you don't get to say, "Well I don't want to be another me-too", if you don't have a product that'll sell.

If you don't, you damned well better "me-too" and go from there.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like MobileIron is already doing something like that.

Re:Seriously

[jeffmeden]

It's an enterprise app like Google Apps is enterprise-ready... You can use it for "Enterprise-like" features but do Enterprises truly use it exclusively? Hell no.

All RIM would have needed to do was make a suite of apps that look like the old apps they had before (not hard since Android apps don't have hard and fast style rules) and then build a management backend that looked like what they had before, so that admins wouldn't have a huge learning curve when going to a BB/Android hybrid.

Fear of change is what RIM was banking on, by deciding to do things the way they always had and shunning any alternative. For decision makers that fear is quickly going extinct; today if you don't embrace change then you (like RIM) go extinct instead. That was their downfall, they put all their chips in the "lets just not change" category and didn't realize that change is absolutely inevitable. If they had walked the line, catered to those who still had a preference for the old BB style while allowing change to happen organically, they would have had a niche. As of now, their niche is solely organizations who haven't woken up to change (and those companies are either going to wake up or go out of business. Not a good spot to find yourself.

Re:Seriously

[udachny]

I find your nickname strangely appropriate for the comment you made on this story!

It does sound like RIM is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not his point. his point is that RIMM made another Droid based phone, they'd most lilely jsut be another piece of hte same old hardware. That's what no differention means.

BTW: Since no one seems to know anythign and everyone acts liek they know everything, The BB10 and Playbook can run many Android based apps. Not sure about specific examples but it isquite trivial to port something like Angry birds to the BB10. Alot of things will be in the BB10's store for purchase.

From my reading, it soundslie kthe BB10 is going to have a software based barier so that the traditional BB10 enterprise apps are totally blcoked from media apps liek angry birds for security reasons.

So, your going to still have a secure enteprise device that can do almost as much as a Droid in terms of games and multimedia. So, if comapnies see this, they might stop the BTOD thing and start requiring BB10. And some companies have found that DYOD does not work because of het 100 varients of het Droid causing unexpxected costs on IT departments. It will all flsuh out in a few years though. BYOD had intended consequences. Time will expose the unitntended ones.

Re:Seriously

[Omnifarious]

Yes, this is exactly true. They could've taken the Android platform and ran in their own direction with it. They lacked imagination, or perhaps misunderstood the purpose and power of Open Source. That's what they should've done.

And you're right, when it comes to apps for doing stuff at work, Android isn't that great right now.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Incompetency of a CEO excellent shown . . . .

Re:Seriously

[NatasRevol]

That's a lot of future talk.

will be
going to
in a few years
will expose

Re:Seriously

[oakgrove]

Samsung sells all the Android phones because they make the best Android phones. It isn't about "sucking the oxygen", it is about making a better product and people buying that product. And there isn't an "Android world" in the context of what matters here. This is the smartphone world where everybody competes against everybody no matter what OS you are using. Nokia competes against Apple competes against Samsung competes against Nokia and on and on. Using contrived rhetoric to push your anti-agenda is just you being a hater and ignoring reality. As for your Motorola and Nexus 7 blather, do you have any facts to back up your bullshit?

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Either your Blackberry is broken, or the Playbook's onscreen keyboard is abysmal.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, posting as AC making inflamitory comments that ignore real life.

Just like when 2.3 rolled out from Google, it tooks 5-8 months to upgrade the majority from 2.2 to 2.3. Look now! it's about 5-8 months from 4.0, and 4.0 skyrocketed from like 4-5% to almost 15% in the past month!

Gee, who would have thought it takes time to port software over?

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

As for your Motorola and Nexus 7 blather, do you have any facts to back up your bullshit?

The Nexus 7 is the same grade of hardware, and yet it's half as much as the iPad... Come on, there has to be something nefarious going on! No way could $200 get you a usable micro-PC with a tiny display... It must cost something more like $400! And it must be heavy too! Otherwise it is either inferior or forged from the lava of Mount Doom.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

the majority of Android OEMs sticking with 2.x for all eternity

The rollout of Android 4 has been a bit slow, but the customers want it. All the new phones are coming out with Android 4.x; it's just that the OEMs are not going back and releasing 4.x updates for 2.x devices.

Android 2.x is ageing out of the market.

Re:Seriously

[jeffmeden]

Not to mention the spellcheck feature on his BlackBerry is seriously lacking... THAT'S going to be better in BB10 too!

Re:Seriously

[compro01]

All the new phones are coming out with Android 4.x

Except Samsung who pushed out the new Rugby and the Captivate Glide with 2.3 for some inscrutable reason.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the screen is half the size?
And less battery life?

And OH MY GOD a non-replacable battery?

Re:Seriously

[oakgrove]

You mean like the screen is half the size?

Many people see this as a net positive.

And less battery life?

The 7 gets 8 hours and the iPad gets 10. Reports have come up of the 7 getting 10 when on a continuous video loop. If it got 6 hours of less you would have an argument but as it stands you don't.

And OH MY GOD a non-(easily)-replacable battery?

They all have that problem. And, oh, FTFY.

Re:Seriously

[adri]

Running in your own direction with open source is only as good as your team of trained monkeys is at keeping things reintegrated with upstream.

It's not "free".

Re:Seriously

[stalky14]

I'd mod this to the top if I could. Nail on the head.

Also, I think it is because public companies are always forced to give at least the illusion of growth, even when contraction is their best hope for survival.

Re:Seriously

[farble1670]

Then you see things like the Nexus 7, where the profit is all in the advertising spyware, not the hardware.

the profit is in the ecosystem ... google play apps, movies, books, and music. this is model coined by amazon with the fire, don't be surprised.

Re:Seriously

[farble1670]

And you're right, when it comes to apps for doing stuff at work, Android isn't that great right now.

why?

it has a decent email and calendar app, which can be hooked up to your corp w/ activesync (or imap, or whatever). it runs VPN clients. you can use google talk for IM, or download one of many decent IM apps that will work with whatever setup your enterprise is running. it has the best mobile browser bar none (chrome mobile).

and, unlike iOS, your enterprise can actually distribute home grown enterprise apps in the enterprise. iOS forces everything to go through their appstore. good luck getting your enterprise app approved there. what a concept ... your company can write apps the hook into the enterprise infrastructure and distribute them to employees.

so what are you lacking? or let me rephrase, as an iOS user, what do you think android lacks for enterprise productivity?

Re:Seriously

[Omnifarious]

That's true. But I bet that might be a lot easier than creating a whole new OS for yourself.

Re:Seriously

[Omnifarious]

There is no decent teleconfering app that doesn't go through Google+. There has been strong pushback on the idea of using Google accounts for anything at work. And using a social networking site like that for a conference call seems broken.

Also, no good support for the kinds of instant messaging that's used inside of companies (which, unfortunately, tends to be Microsoft stuff).

As an email client, the IMAP client leaves much to be desired. And K-9 isn't much better.

Re:Seriously

[farble1670]

There is no decent teleconfering app that doesn't go through Google+.

skype.

Also, no good support for the kinds of instant messaging that's used inside of companies (which, unfortunately, tends to be Microsoft stuff).

iOS has support for MSFT communicator?

As an email client, the IMAP client leaves much to be desired. And K-9 isn't much better.

it's very usable. i've used iOS mail and they seem equivalent to me, but i don't use iOS mail much.

Re:Seriously

[jonbryce]

Well I think Microsoft would recommend Lync for corporate use.

Regrets

[Anonymous Coward]

So do you think they have regrets about that choice now?

And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Sir_Sri]

This is the space left for where you admit your error and announce a switch to android.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The content of this space is why you're going out of business. We all understand that it would be very very hard to be competitive against samsung and HTC and so on. But blackberry is now next to irrelevant in the marketplace. And RIM needs a rapid change in direction. Hell, jumping on windows phone 8 is a better plan than clinging to blackberry 10.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Vanderhoth]

And RIM needs a rapid change in direction

I disagree.

There's nothing they can do at this point to recover. I use to like blackberry, but your right and now they're just completely irrelevant. To think four years ago Barack Obama was angry because he was told he would have to give up his blackberry after being elected.

P.S.
I'm Canadian and nigher for or against Obama. I only mentioned him because I remember reading the news articles discussing his blackberry issue during the last US Presidential election.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[stanlyb]

It was 4 years ago. In this niche, sleeping for 4 years is usually with fatal consequences. For god sake, they got all the tools and devs and IP, and they are still unable to produce something as simple as OS???? W.T.F.?

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[StuartHankins]

Yep absolutely. We standardized on BlackBerry and have our own BES server. All new employees who qualified for a work-provided phone received a BlackBerry. A few of us in IT turned in our BlackBerry devices and bought our own iPhones/Androids.

Then new salespeople came on board with their own iPhones and Androids and we resisted... then executives started switching to iPhones/Androids and wanted us to set them up. You don't tell them "no". We just released an official internal how-to for setting up iPhones although it won't be supported for everyone until the Exchange 2010 upgrade is complete.

There are few reasons to consider BlackBerry now. A few things don't work as expected, for instance accepting a meeting request on either iPhone / Android doesn't result in a response to the sender for some reason (using Exchange 2003 anyway). This may all be fixed once Exchange 2010 is in place.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

And RIM needs a rapid change in direction.

Agreed.

Hell, jumping on windows phone 8 is a better plan than clinging to blackberry 10

Wait, what? It's a completely new OS for phones, and that's not a change in direction?

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[CMYKjunkie]

P.S. I'm Canadian and nigher for or against Obama. I only mentioned him because I remember reading the news articles discussing his blackberry issue during the last US Presidential election.

Wow... my first read through your "nigher" typo had my mind placing another "g" where your "h" is there and me thinking you were a huge racist! Glad I was wrong. :)

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in nerd land to people think RIMM is going out of buienss. No debt, gorwing cash horde., positive Free Cash Flow. If that's the definition of going under, then Apple too is screwed.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Anonymous Coward]

Liar, you thought of it after and thought it was funny, and so decided to make shit up.

You know that is what you did.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long is that cash hoard going to last with no sales? The BYOD revolution is well underway, RIM's only hope was to port their stuff to iOS and Android. They will go bankrupt or be acquired, they have a year, maybe two left.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Sir_Sri]

You mean like people who buy or hold RIM stock? (https://www.google.ca/finance?q=TSE%3ARIM) that's down what, 75% in 12 months. The people who turfed out the founders and CEO?

The new CEO who's pleading for time with investors? Or the same CEO who realizing how much trouble they are in has had to come out and explain why they didn't go the most obvious route to try and make money? (I will point out that the RIM founders had a completely different plan, that would have moved RIM almost entirely into the infrastructure side of the business and exited the consumer products section).

gorwing cash horde.

I think you mean shrinking. As of their Q1 2013 filing (which was just over a month ago) their GAAP was a 520 million dollar loss. Momentum in spite of the iphone got them to 6 months ago. And suddenly they've started to hit a brick wall. Nokia is in essentially the same boat, they had momentum in the sales channel, but no one actually wanted the new product (BB9 or WP7) so when they ran out of stuff people did want they basically hit a fiscal cliff.

Importantly, the difference between RIM and Nokia is that Nokia *might* have a product people will want to buy 12 months from now, and can plead for cash from microsoft. RIM has nothing that people want, and no one to beg for money from.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Sir_Sri]

I'm not too far from Waterloo, at a university and a few years ago RIM gave us a bunch of phones to do development on. At that time the iPhone 3g was about a year old in canada, and when we walked into the classroom and said 'this years project is on Blackberry' we got a giant groan from the class. Lots of kids still had blackberries. But they saw the winds of change.

This last year we were doing a project on one or both of iphone and android (or BB if they wanted). And in a class of 35 computer scientists and software engineers 1 was willing to do iphone, everyone else was android. We're an hour and a half from RIM and large chunk of our graduates could have made very good careers at RIM a few years ago. No none of them want to touch the business like they have the plague. It's sad.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[LordLimecat]

The thing is, youll note that for the most part it isnt IT people saying "theres something wrong with BES; we need to move to IOS". Its that the employees over the last few years have gotten more leeway, and have started moving to entertainment devices with ActiveSync.

Im not convinced that RIM did something wrong by sticking to what it remains phenomenally good at, except that they did not see and react to this new phenomenon fast enough.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Sir_Sri]

I mean switching to windows phone 8 would be a better plan than their current one, even though windows phone 8 doesn't seem all that likely to succeed. Blackberry 10 is dead before it arrives because it's the wrong strategy. Windows phone 8 will at least have microsoft flinging money around for a while. That was the joke.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Anonymous Coward]

All new employees who qualified for a work-provided phone received a BlackBerry.

Almost makes it sounds like some kind of reward...

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[StuartHankins]

At one point it was considered a reward, and in some ways still is... company-provided phone with company-provided service and support, company-provided upgrades, and the devices weren't cheap either... in many cases it was considered a status symbol as well as a productivity tool that meant salespeople could just "do" their email without cracking open a laptop.

Now, people expect more from their devices. The limited internet functionality of the Bold or similar lines, problems with the tiny tiny ball to control everything, the over-reliance on nested menus, the lack of an app ecosystem, difficulties with media and attachments etc became a breaking point when BlackBerry products were compared to iPhone and Android devices. Enough so that we haven't reviewed the newest versions due to dwindling marketshare of RIM and its uncertain future. Instead of paying for the whole phone bill, the company set a fixed limit for phone and data plans for "bring your own" devices; this means some people pay more for service than before, but because they can use their preferred device they are happy.

Privacy isn't as clear-cut with "bring your own" devices, but we've made it fairly simple: Sending media through our network or on behalf of our company means following our rules. We don't care what personal documents or pictures are on their device so long as they don't transmit them through our network or on behalf of us. If you're showing inappropriate pictures or playing inappropriate media to co-workers it's an HR issue just like if you used a computer. If you want to use our VPN, you must have and maintain the use of a lock code on your device and we reserve the right to inspect it on demand. In the end, so long as they can use their device in a secure and efficient manner everyone is happy.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[jbolden]

I think Nokia did this to themselves with the platform shift. Their dumb phones were very popular until they told everyone they didn't want to support the gradual migration from Symbian and instead were going to focus on the smartphone market with Windows. Nokia has a good strategy and an execution problem but still growing sales.

Their problems were driven by the platform shift. Customers were more or less happy.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Sir_Sri]

Nokia at least saw the writing on the wall and realized they needed an OS to compete with the iPhone. I think they guessed wrong.

Nokia had a cheap dumbphone market but they had a huge smartphone business, just not in north america, they even had premium phones in the 20k/year range. With software winning out over diamond encrusted the 20k phone business imploded and everyone else ate the smartphone market out from under them. I don't think dumbphones ever got them much money.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[jbolden]

Vertu was a neat line of phones but that was always a niche product. The high end stuff was loved. And I think they had a good product in MeeGo.

Apple didn't have an existing phone business in 2007 Nokia did, all over the world. Apple's strategy is to make an incredible smart phone and get high margin customers to switch. Nokia's strategy should have been to migrate their dumb phone customers to feature phones and then to smart phones like the feature phones but that use more data. "the next billion" strategy. Apple wasn't a competitor of Nokia, Samsung is. They never should have been focused on the iPhone. They should focus on beating the $250 Android phone.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Sir_Sri]

Nokia's strategy should have been to migrate their dumb phone customers to feature phones and then to smart phones like the feature phones but that use more data.

but there was nothing to keep them on a Nokia platform. Nokia smartphones were inferior, and the sooner customers made the switch the better.

They should focus on beating the $250 Android phone.

That's a low return business. You can move volume, but you make next to nothing on it. And that's why they went with Windows phone, the Lumia 710 is their answer to the 250 dollar android. Unfortunately they didn't have a platform other than MeeGo, and I get the feeling they figured it was going to fail without a backing of developers.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[jbolden]

Nokia smartphones were inferior, and the sooner customers made the switch the better.

It would be feature phones that mattered. 3rd world customers weren't mostly ready to switch to smartphones. And I don't know that they were pre-force inferior. I think MeeGo could have worked well. Look how well reviewed the 9 is.

That's a low return business. You can move volume, but you make next to nothing on it.

That's their business. Yeah you make 10% of $250 on say 1/2b phones a year and clear $12b a year in profits. I could live with that. Let Apple make $300 per phone in profits.

the Lumia 710 is their answer to the 250 dollar android

The problem is customers hate Windows phones. For example in the USA sales are down 40% in a market that has tripled in size in the last 3 years.

Unfortunately they didn't have a platform other than MeeGo, and I get the feeling they figured it was going to fail without a backing of developers.

Symbian customers love MeeGo. Why wouldn't Symbian developers move to the new QT based platform. Heck, assume they couldn't get developers. Develop the first 500 apps at $50k each (total expense $25m) and give them away to attract users. Apps are no big deal for a global phone. Windows doesn't have developers either right now. Eventually of course they are going to want tens of thousands of apps, but Symbian customers were on phones with less than 500 apps.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[sjames]

At one time they had the option to go with Android and a secure container for the Blackberry parts. It wouldn't much matter which ran inside the other. It's probably too late for that now.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[farble1670]

I'm Canadian and nigher for or against Obama.

what a great world we live in, where people have to announce their non-opinion of the US president lest they be raked over the coals when people interpret their comments and pro or con.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Sir_Sri]

Look how well reviewed the 9 is.

Reviews don't equate to adoption. See windows phones. That's the whole root of the problem. Windows phones are decent, but they're not iphones, and they're not androids. So people aren't buying them.

Yeah you make 10% of $250 on say 1/2b

Right, but customers stopped buying those. When they can buy last years iphone, or they can buy this years iphone for 100 dollars or whatever, that market shriveled up and died on them. People would buy a cheap iphone (or a cheap droid) but no one wanted into symbian.

Symbian customers love MeeGo. Why wouldn't Symbian developers move to the new QT based platform

Have you ever done Symbian development? Have you done Symbian development and iPhone or Android (or hell blackberry) development? Symbian is soul crushingly terrible. I did a Symbian project in 2008 and people were thrilled to be onto a Blackberry project by 2009 when everyone knew BB was doomed (and still is), because that was at least better to work with than Symbian. The developer money is in ease of development and the App store model, and with those, Apple (and then Google) blew Symbian away.

Windows doesn't have developers either right now

no, and it probably won't. Nokia bet that they'd take off, and haven't. That was at a least a possibility, lots of people who jumped on the android bandwagon aren't moving anywhere either, you can guess and guess wrong or not be able to pull it off (e.g. Sony droids). But there was never any hope for symbian once there was any sort of an alternative.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[jbolden]

Let me just say under your theory where Nokia's existing business was worth essentially nothing the best move for Nokia was not to go into Windows phones but sell their patents and sales relationship and exit the business. Under your theory 2 years ago Nokia was horribly overvalued.

I don't think the situation was nearly that desperate. I think people really did love Nokia phones and they really do have a loyal customer base in dumb phones. Conversely I don't think they have a customer base for smart phones. I think that they needed to grow and so Nokia like products, like the N9 were the right way to go. In other words that prior to Elop Nokia had an execution problem but not deep deep problems. That is the "burning platform" was false.

Conversely if the burning platform were true and the dumbphone business were dead, then the Windows strategy wasn't a terrible one. Though I don't understand why Elop wouldn't allow the N9 strategy at the same time. See which one worked.

Have you ever done Symbian development? Have you done Symbian development and iPhone or Android (or hell blackberry) development? Symbian is soul crushingly terrible. I did a Symbian project in 2008 and people were thrilled to be onto a Blackberry project by 2009 when everyone knew BB was doomed (and still is), because that was at least better to work with than Symbian. The developer money is in ease of development and the App store model, and with those, Apple (and then Google) blew Symbian away.

No I've never done Symbian development and I've heard bad things about it. Your phrasing was amusing but you aren't the only one whose said that sort of stuff. OTOH I've done QT development and QT is lots of fun.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[UpnAtom]

They had easily the best phone OS available: MeeGo. And they dropped it.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[UpnAtom]

Nokia smartphones were inferior

Huh? N9 possibly still the best smartphone ever made. N900: absolutely nothing in its class because the N950 was never released. Nokia 808 Pureview: can't stop people raving about the camera.

Nokia was on a downturn that wasn't going to reverse any time soon. It's possible they panicked.

It's hard to see them making much money out of it but to suggest their phones were inferior sounds like Elop-think.

Unfortunately they didn't have a platform other than MeeGo, and I get the feeling they figured it was going to fail without a backing of developers.

I'm not sure we'll ever know. Maybe MS made them an offer they couldn't refuse. Maybe Elop is a trojan horse. Maybe they just panicked.

And they could have simply run Android apps on top of the wonderful Meego using ACL or Alien Dalvik.

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like people who buy or hold RIM stock?

Some jackasses did worse than others:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/227432-now-apple-could-have-some-problems

Re:And you were wrong and are now changing course?

[Vanderhoth]

Well, I understand at this current point in time there is an election about to take place and everyone wants their candidate to be the one that wins. So of course saying something negative or positive about a candidate is going to provoke the more militant people to come out of the wood work to try and "correct" wrong points of view. Which is a shame.

There will be courses

[Anonymous Coward]

taught about the downfall of RIM and the never ending bad decisions .

Re:There will be courses

[stanlyb]

Actually, they did one good decision recently, firing the management, but as you could guess, it was already too late. We have a saying, the fish spoils from the head.....

Re:There will be courses

[oldmac31310]

We, who where?

not a great justification

[Anonymous Coward]

Rim should have added better enterprise services to android. That's the differentiator. Wasting time implementing me too functionality on their own platform is a wasted effort.

No room to differentiate?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are virtually no Android handsets with keyboards, and most of those that do have keyboards are low to mid range phones. As RIM have a reputation for building phones which have very good keyboards, surely this could be part of their differentiation strategy. They are also known for producing a very good messenger system, surely it wouldn't have been too hard to port this to Android? They could even sell it to users of other brands of android handsets.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[FranTaylor]

android devices work great with keyboards

check out the new fangled "bluetooth" technology

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more. The one thing I did like when I had a BlackBerry was its amazing keyboard. I don't care for touch screen devices, personally. I use my phone extensively for typing (longwinded) e-mails on the go. I settled for a touchscreen Android phone because the BlackBerry OS was hopefully out of date (especially its browser).

If they had given me an Android phone with a keyboard and some extra apps for business type applications I would buy it right now.

They should take advantage of the ubiquitous API that Android provides and the platform and focus on refining it for their target market.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[jimicus]

How will that work when you've got an entire apps ecosystem based on the assumption that the phone has a large touchscreen? Only way I can think of is you make the phone with both a large touchscreen and a keyboard and you have the thing somehow open up, but then you usually wind up with something about the size and weight of a housebrick.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Chris Mattern]

There are virtually no Android handsets with keyboards, and most of those that do have keyboards are low to mid range phones.

Really? Is that a fact?

Re:No room to differentiate?

[compro01]

There are virtually no Android handsets with keyboards, and most of those that do have keyboards are low to mid range phones. As RIM have a reputation for building phones which have very good keyboards, surely this could be part of their differentiation strategy.

Exactly.

A Torch 9810 with Android would be excellent and would almost certainly sell like crazy. I don't imagine the porting would even be that difficult. Several Android devices use the same SoC.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[mehrotra.akash]

HTC desire Z has a nice form factor

Re:No room to differentiate?

[iluvcapra]

check out the new fangled "bluetooth" technology

Handsets with keyboards, not handsets that let you bring your own laptop keyboard.

And the GP is right, for all of the talk about the freedom to "choose" in the Android ecosystem, the top of the line phones, the ones that are meant to meet the iPhone on performance, are all basically identical -- large screens, no keyboards, lotsa camera, AMOLED screen, removable battery, 4G. Candybar-format phones with hardware keyboards are also-rans running Eclair or Froyo, or only available on Sprint, and with second-rate processors. The best hardware keyboard phone, if we admit sliders, would probably be the Droid 4, which came out a month ago(?), and it ships with friggin Gingerbread and a brand-X CPU.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[FranTaylor]

"ALL" basically identical

do you mean to say that?

there are NO exceptions?

The nice thing about android is that you don't have to get googles permission to use it in whatever form factor you want. With Apple you are stuck with their form factor and with Microsoft you have to meet their requirements.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[compro01]

1. One good example, assuming it wasn't Verizon exclusive and thus actually available outside the US.
2. "Coming soon" with Gingerbread? That does not make me optimistic about their level of continuing software support.
3. You don't call that a "low to mid range" phone? Furthermore, it'll never get ICS.
4. T-mobile exclusive and again, no ICS in sight.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[FranTaylor]

Wow you just described a great new business opportunity that RIM could have taken advantage of, if they had chosen android

just think of how many nice little android keyboard devices they could have sold with the market all to themselves.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Zontar The Mindless]

He didn't say that Android phones can't work with keyboards, he said that most Android phones that come with keyboards are not that great--a distinction which you seem to have missed.

He also that BB's users are going to expect a good phone with a good built-in keyboard--a point which you also seem to have missed.

But thanks for playing, anyway.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[compro01]

How will that work when you've got an entire apps ecosystem based on the assumption that the phone has a large touchscreen? Only way I can think of is you make the phone with both a large touchscreen and a keyboard and you have the thing somehow open up, but then you usually wind up with something about the size and weight of a housebrick.

Look at the Torch 9810. 3.2" screen, slide keyboard, 14.6mm thick. A small screen is less of a problem if you don't have a keyboard taking up half of it.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[FranTaylor]

"most Android phones that come with keyboards are not that great--a distinction which you seem to have missed."

So did RIM, they could have filled that market nicely with, as you say, no competition.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Geeky]

The Palm Pre managed a touchscreen and a pretty decent keyboard. And a pretty decent OS, for that matter.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Geeky]

Shame they don't seem to be keeping a keyboard phone in their lineup. There seemed to be talk of an HTC One Z - to follow on the naming convention and have a keyboard version of their latest phones - but it doesn't seem to have materialised.

I've got a normal Desire, but having migrated from a Palm Pre, just can't quite get used to the lack of a real keyboard. I was tempted by the Z at the time, but felt the writing was on the wall for keyboard phones and that I'd have to get to grips with touchscreen typing eventually. Still don't like it, nearly a year on.

But maybe that's an age thing, so pardon me while I stop typing and go tell those kids to get off my lawn.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not a business person are you?

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

The droid 4 is the only one that was high end at release, only availible on a single carrier. The samsung captivate glide was close, but it is not nearly as good as the Galaxy S2 varients that were availible at the same time.

They are afterthoughts for the most part.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Andy Dodd]

TI OMAP4? Brand X? Are you fucking kidding me? You realize it's the same CPU as the Galaxy Nexus (with the exception of a slightly slower GPU, which doesn't matter that much for a business device. The CPU and the Ducati subsystem for media encoding and playback are the same.)

However every other criticism you have of the D4 is correct... Outdated software + locked bootloader = kills the phone.

The Captivate Glide is in an even worse situation - while it has a great screen, it has a Tegra 2 (OMAP4 smokes T2 across the board even at the same clock frequency, which is how Samsung managed to get away with making the Galaxy Tab 2 the same clock speed and core count as the original Tab) and vastly outdated software.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Andy Dodd]

1) Droid 4 - Verizon exclusive, outdated software
2) Cappy Glide - Redheaded stepchild. Outdated software, vastly obsolete CPU (It's barely OK to ship a Cortex-A9 dual-core flagship - the Tegra2 is the worst of the A9 dual cores by a long shot. Even at the same clock speed, OMAP4 can easily smoke Tegra 2, which is how Samsung got away with the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and 10.1 not being total epic failures.)
3) HTC Status is a low-end Facebook phone
4) 1.2 GHz Snapdragon S3 (weak), Gingerbread (obsolete and outdated), 768MB RAM (even last year's phones had 1GB), 4GB storage (I haven't seen anything but lowend phones sell with less than 16GB) - Undoubtedly low-end

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Kupfernigk]

I venture to disagree. The Torch is well made but it looks and feels old fashioned next to an HP Pre 3. Which flopped despite a better OS. The market, other than weirdos like me, just seems to like mini_2001 slabs.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Hadlock]

I held off on buying a new smartphone because I was waiting on a really top notch android phone with a blackberry style keyboard to emerge, preferably with the same form factor. Finally a few did, but as I was ready to click "buy", I found out that the hardware behind the keyboard was mid to low tier 1.6 android gear, designed for 16 year old girls (the fact that it came in an optional color, pink, should have been a tip-off), and not power users. I ended up with a Nexus S instead.
 
I still yearn for my blackberry's keyboard though.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[Anonymous Coward]

4) When I bought mine over a year ago it came with 16 GB storage and it runs ICS just fine.

Re:No room to differentiate?

[iluvcapra]

I consider all TI silicon second-rate. But I'm a bit of a prick :)

Re:No room to differentiate?

[iluvcapra]

The nice thing about android is that you don't have to get googles permission to use it in whatever form factor you want.

It'd be nice if phone manufacturers actually used that freedom to make phones with a variety of features at the bleeding edge, instead of just bashing out a buncha iPhone killers. Who cares how much freedom Google gives manufacturers if manufacturers don't use it.

Huh?

[FranTaylor]

amazon e-ink kindle and google nexus phone are both android based.

They couldn't be more different!

"no wiggle room" what is he talking about???

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The e-ink Kindles are in fact running a custom Linux build, not Android.

There are e-ink devices out there based on Android though (I think the Nook is).

Re:Huh?

[compro01]

it's all GPL so you can use as much or as little of it as you want

You're a little off there. The kernel and other Linux bits are GPL. The Android stuff is under the Apache license.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Kindle Fire is running Android. Yes, I know Fire is not an e-ink Kindle. I just wanted to make that distinction. I have a Kindle Keyboard at home that I love. If you like to read novels, nothing beets e-ink because its easy on your eyes and on the battery. Still, I had to have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus for everything else mobile.

Re:Huh?

[FranTaylor]

does that invalidate my assertion that you can use as much or as little of it as you want?

Re:Huh?

[compro01]

No, just clarifying.

Re:Huh?

[FranTaylor]

Then you should have been clear

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop the attitude.

The other poster was just correcting your factually incorrect statement. Whilst his corrections don't change the point you were trying to make, you were still factually incorrect.

Re:Huh?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Andorid is not android without android. You can't simply take android and remove the Dalvik vm and still call it android. Dalvik relly is android.

Re:Huh?

[FranTaylor]

who said anything about what it is called?

they can call it whatever they want to.

if they are trying to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crowd then they are probably better off NOT using the "andrioid" name.

Re:Huh?

[WiiVault]

He was, it was you who were confusing and confused. The world has enough people who won't admit they were mistaken and instead turn confrontational. They don't need you in their club.

Re:Huh?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

The fact that the linux kernel is adaptable as it is has nothing to do with android. If they use linux as a kernel, and don't use the dalvik vm or a clone of that vm, it wouldn't be anything like android and wouldn't be able to run android applications. It would be as different to android as meego or webos are.

Re:Huh?

[FranTaylor]

the point is that you can use as much or as little of that infrastructure as they want to. you don't have to start from scratch, you don't have to slavishly copy, either.

for example you can do like amazon did with the kindle: you can take the android kernel and device drivers and nothing more. Or you can do like the nook and take more. Or you can go full monty with android branding. it's all good.

Re:Huh?

[FranTaylor]

HE was the one who started with the nitpicking, *I* was the one who made the original assertion, which was NOT invalidated, and STILL STANDS.

Re:Huh?

[FranTaylor]

by the way B&N Nook is not "android" however I can flash cyanogenmod onto it, and voila, android tablet. it runs netflix and google earth and all that other android goodness, but there was no "android" on the box.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, but pedants gotta be pedantic.

Re:Huh?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

At some point, if you take little enough of that "android" infrastructure, you don't have that infrastructure anymore. Like the linux kernel. It is not android. Android is not a kernel. There is a kernel that android uses and Linux is its name.

WebOs is also open now, btw. As is Tizen, the new project for meego.

Re:Huh?

[WiiVault]

Even the license isn't the same... but whatever makes you feel better.

Re:Huh?

[BlueBlade]

The point that people were making, and that you seem very intent on not getting, is that the e-ink kindle has nothing to do with android at all. It runs a custom linux build, but doesn't have any relationship with android, nor any shared code with android, unless you count the fact that android is also using linux as its kernel. Calling the e-ink kindle OS "android" makes just as much sense as saying that a Red Hat desktop PC is running android.

Blackberry OS 10 is beautiful

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackberry OS 10 is beautiful. However there were other problems. With the blackberry bold I would accidentally touch the touch screen or keypad when using the other. The keys were tiny. Email alerts would either all make alert sounds or not. There was no ability to customize mail notification based on any criteria. This made it useless as a pager for system alerts. And the OS updates... 4 hours with little warning to upgrade the OS. Oh well, no phone for me today I guess.

I seriously considered the BB Torch. I found it comparable to the iPhone, but it lacked a decent app market. Given that limitation the iPhone was a better deal because it was a similar OS and hardware at the same price point and it had many more useful apps.

Re:Blackberry OS 10 is beautiful

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that it pocket dialed 911 very often. This was improved in the Bold since their previous model, but it was still problematic.

Re:Blackberry OS 10 is beautiful

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Blackberry OS 10 is beautiful. However there were other problems. ....

So what does any of this have to do with BB10? None of the current BB models are running BB 10 (including Bold and Torch) - it hasn't been released yet.

Uh huh...

[poofmeisterp]

Heins says that RIM took a long, hard look at migrating to Android before deciding to plow forward with BlackBerry 10.

And that's definitely, 100%, without a doubt, not an attempt to draw psychological attention and curiosity toward BlackBerry 10 being better than Android OS to drive sales up. Definitely not.

</snark>

Re:Uh huh...

[GNU(slash)Nickname]

So RIM's not allowed to market their products now?

Re:Uh huh...

[poofmeisterp]

So RIM's not allowed to market their products now?

Sure they are. And in the method I mentioned, they shall receive ridicule.

Re:Uh huh...

[GNU(slash)Nickname]

But isn't virtually ALL marketing "an attempt to draw psychological attention and curiosity toward " your product being better than your competition? How is this different than traditional advertising, or Apple's product secrecy strategy?

The ironic thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of my corporate clients were the ones pushing to ditch Blackberry for iPhones. The idiot managers didn't care about the corporate functionality, they wanted the bells and whistles and iTunes functionality, and the status of being an Apple user. IT didn't especially like the Blackberries -- BES was a temperamental piece of shit -- but at least the goddamn things were manageable. But the first time a middle manager brought his iPhone to the office, the upper managers had to have them too, and BB was doomed.

RIM KILLED QNX

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad thing that QNX is now dead unless they sell it on otherwise we are left with vxWorks.

why

[Anonymous Coward]

why does BGR crap keep making the front page?

ahead of the game?

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder they are failing, "but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content " Isn't the point in working to enjoy life and consume as much as possible? Consuming and enjoying things are the definition of being ahead of the game in my book. Looking at two people, one who works 120 hours a week, has no social life, no family, only business friends, no hobbies, and a bank account with 1 million, or a person who works 40 hours a week, has a family, social friends, hobbies, and a bank account with 100k who do you think is ahead of the game? Your life is finite, those who trade it piecemeal at a time for something they do not enjoy to do are losing in my book. Those that are truly ahead of the game are those that love their jobs AND make a lot of money.

RIM should hang in there...

[logicassasin]

The last thing the market needs is a choice between only 2 platforms for smartphones. Yes, I know that Windows Mobile is still out there as is Symbian, but because Microsoft took entirely too long to bring Windows Mobile 7 to market and Nokia really didn't push Symbian as hard as they could have (i.e getting a major player like HTC or Samsung to build Symbian based phones early in the game) they're both pretty much niche players now instead of the former powerhouse enterprise/business players they once were. At one point, when you said "Smartphone", you could only have been referring to a Blackberry, Palm, or Windows Mobile/PocketPC based phone with Symbian being the underdog. Even after June 29, 2007, when the iPhone was released, these were still considered to be true smartphones by many in business with the iPhone being the poseur.

Palm is gone, RIM is facing tough times, and Symbian is nearly extinct. Windows Mobile 7 is not even a part of the public consciousness even though there is still plenty of advertising for it. This is sad since there's plenty of enterprise users out there that don't need/want "Robot Unicorn Attack" or "iApp For More Stupidity" alongside their messaging services.

Re:RIM should hang in there...

[HappyEngineer]

Whether it's desirable or not, that's the way it is. Everyone has a choice between 2 viable platforms and BlackBerry certainly isn't one of them.

Re:RIM should hang in there...

[Anonymous Coward]

At one point, when you said "Smartphone", you could only have been referring to a Blackberry, Palm, or Windows Mobile/PocketPC based phone with Symbian being the underdog.

Really? I really can't remember a point where BB, Palm or WM sold more phones than Symbian. Actually, Symbian was still the #1 platform until some time before the "burning platform" memo and the Elopcalypse.

Re:RIM should hang in there...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what exactly is needed!

Android is open source and commuinities, carriers, companies or users can make totally own kind software system to their smart phone (if just hardware manufacturers allow) with Android.

So far I have not seen so great compability among smartphones than with Android, even iOS becomes second. Some people talks about ''fragmentation'' but Android isn't. I have seven different Android devices, from all different manufacturers. Two are custom made (post-installed unofficial Android for Windows device), two are post-installed with custom Android and three are official ones. Even today I have Android 2.1 - 4.0 devices in use and all are compatible with each other. Even when hardware is from x86 to ARM (different architectures). I can copy applications from device to other or just share installation link from play store. I don't need to think anything else than is a application tablet version only or for all. (same is with iOS, you can not install tablet version to iPhone).

We need a standard, Android is right there giving it to us, a one, single standard, what is open and developed BY USERS. NOT BY SINGLE COMPANY ALONE!

Hell... a monopoly is great thing, if just the monopoly product is great one. And open source is damn great one, best one what is possible to be. It is like democracy where people can vote their wanted people to power and people in power are continually swapped and replaced and no one can spend more than 1 season in power and get corrupted. When people vote about something, it is done, not what some companies bosses say and lobby to THEIR presentators in government who have sit there decades and got corrupted more than ever.

With open source, no one can have actually monopoly, but every user can have a change to use best choice for them. No one is ripping away users freedom because license allows middle man to do so.
At beginning all software was open source, then companies closed it, then someone went and gave all credit of open source to one GNU man because he 'invented' open source (what existed decades before him) .

Now we have change to make open source again the one and help human kind. We don't need competition, as it just rips off users and customers and leaves worst choices on market. No one gains anything good from competition, we need TEAMWORK!

getting stuff done

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. This guy is hilarious. If blackberry was really all about getting stuff done, you'd think they'd have bb10 out by now :)

Less rhetoric more action

Or at least less stuidity

Same old Content Consumption meme

[Anonymous Coward]

"Our product is a serious productivity tool; everything else is just for drooling masses who want to 'consume content.'"

I think it's hilarious to see that tired old meme applied to the Android platform for once.

Interesting quote

[The Mister Purple]

FTFA, Heins remarks:

"there’s a very stable, slowly growing base of physical keyboard users and most of them are really highly ranked officers"

So, he points out that the keyboard users are the demographic with the least growth potential AND the least staying potential, and he thinks that's a positive?

Re:Interesting quote

[mounthood]

He thinks that "really highly ranked officers" have the money and make the decisions, so RIM needs to keep that market. Which is stupid, but at least it's not crazy-denial-stupid.

RIM should make secure apps for Android/iPhone/WP7/etc... that connect with the next version of their BIS/BES (corporate server.) The market for secure company-controlled communications will adjust to incorporate all the new phones, but it won't have the profit margins RIM is used to.

Re:Interesting quote

[The Mister Purple]

I agree. A cross-platform secure app would address both security concerns & BYOD.

When the titanic was sinking....

[Anonymous Coward]

the ships architect on board at the time, tried with great valor, debated with uneducated fleeing "customers" about the indestructible nature of the titanic. One 3rd class customer was noted to say "Are ya daft mate?, The bloody tub has a hole in it and ya talkin' a-boot how 'we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game'". One crew member was overheard shouting to the CEO, "I rather be drink ya f***ing kool-aid on dry land, sir"
So was the thinking in the hours before the ship submerged under the icy waves.

Translation...

[jemenake]

but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base: it’s all about getting stuff done

Translation: "It's all about checking your email and thinking that no other phone can do that".

Seriously, I've never understood the Blackberry kool-aid. 6-7 years ago, Blackberry people were running around going "Ooh, yeah... I can check my email wherever I am!". Meanwhile, I was on my Palm Treo, checking email, browsing the web, SSH-ing into my servers, playing RPG's, getting turn-by-turn navigation, etc.

Now, granted, I'm sure Blackberry's mail client crashed less-often than the ones for PalmOS... but how did these guys ever convince the business world that, if you want to check your email on the road, the Blackberry is the only device which will do it?

BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe more

[Erbo]

The BB10 OS is already capable of running Android apps, as evidenced by the fact that the Playbook can already do so. Out of the box, though, the only Android apps that will run are ones that have been "ported" and show up in their marketplace.

It is possible, however, by rooting the Playbook, to open it up to full GAPPS capability, including the Google Play Store. RIMM needs to do this for BB10...and then they need to promote the hell out of this capability, saying, "BlackBerry runs all your favorite Android apps...and runs them better!" (Which is true; the QNX kernel of BB10 is far more efficient in an embedded environment than Android's Linux kernel is. This translates into increased battery life.) Karl Denninger has argued that this is the only way for RIMM to avoid complete irrelevance in the marketplace...and the company's performance since he wrote that piece in March seems to bear that out.

They could go further, too. One enterprising hacker has gotten (some) unmodified iOS apps to run on the Playbook. And it's perfectly legal, because the developer has just created his own implementations of relevant Apple APIs, and, under the ruling in Oracle v. Google, APIs are not copyrightable and Apple can't stop him. RIMM should acquire or license this technology and extend it to work with more iOS apps, and promote the hell out of this capability, too. Imagine being able to run virtually any popular smart phone app on one phone...with better battery life than either Android phones or the iPhone. (QNX beats the iOS Darwin kernel for efficiency, too.)

If RIMM does these two things, they could go from zero to hero in one fell swoop. If they fail to do either one...well, next stop is probably a bankruptcy court.

Do, or do-not

[sl4shd0rk]

There is no "try"

Re:Do, or do-not

[Anonymous Coward]

'Do' without 'try' is usually called 'accident'

No thanks.

Ahead of the game?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Blackberrys are for people ahead of the game,what the hell were the 2xCEOs using from 2007 to 2011?

BBM / PIN

[Anonymous Coward]

If you keep up.a little bit with today's youth, you'll know that it's all about sharing their PIN and "BBM me". How come I don't see RIM capitalize on that? To the contrary, at one point contemplate a BBM App for iPhone so your last incentive to go for a Blackberry is out the door too?

The price the phone to the users

[tekrat]

If you're building a phone for executives ONLY, then make it a $1000 phone. These are people who drive 911's, M5's, Ferrari, or some other similarly high-end car. If these are the people willing to spend $300,000 for a top-of-the-line supercar, then they certainly should be willing to shell out $1 to 2 thousand for a phone. But it better be the best damn phone there is.

I mean, if you're paying 2k for a phone, not only should it make the iPhone look like a cheap toy, it should make almost all high-tech items look like cheap toys.

But the problem is that Apple, Samsung and HTC are all making really, really good hardware, and selling it for $200 -- a tenth of the cost. And for all of RIM's wizardry, they aren't going to beat Apple.

So, the executive who is paying enormous sums of money for a car is going to look at the Blackberry, then look at the iPhone, and still decide that the iPhone is the better product, even though it's cheaper.

RIM needs to get their act together and make some really smart decisions. Unfortunately, they are not.

Re:The price the phone to the users

[hawguy]

If you're building a phone for executives ONLY, then make it a $1000 phone. These are people who drive 911's, M5's, Ferrari, or some other similarly high-end car. If these are the people willing to spend $300,000 for a top-of-the-line supercar, then they certainly should be willing to shell out $1 to 2 thousand for a phone. But it better be the best damn phone there is.

I mean, if you're paying 2k for a phone, not only should it make the iPhone look like a cheap toy, it should make almost all high-tech items look like cheap toys.

But the problem is that Apple, Samsung and HTC are all making really, really good hardware, and selling it for $200 -- a tenth of the cost. And for all of RIM's wizardry, they aren't going to beat Apple.

So, the executive who is paying enormous sums of money for a car is going to look at the Blackberry, then look at the iPhone, and still decide that the iPhone is the better product, even though it's cheaper.

RIM needs to get their act together and make some really smart decisions. Unfortunately, they are not.

A $1000 (or worse $2000) phone will be less capable than any iPhone or $500 Android since your sales will be in the hundreds of thousands, maybe low millions if you're lucky, versus the many millions of Android and iPhones sold.

The raw materials build a phone are a small part of the total costs -- estimates place the iPhone at around $200 for parts alone (of course, they can keep costs down by buying entire factory production runs). The biggest expense is the billions of dollars of R&D that goes into making a modern smartphone. If you spread it across many millions of phones it makes the R&D cost per device much lower than if you can only spread it across a hundred thousand devices.

And even if you have $1000 to spend on parts for your high end phone, you still have the exact same power, weight and size constraints that the guys building the more popular phones have. And 6 months after you release your phone, the other guys will have already leapfrogged you with a faster more capable device using faster, cheaper, smaller hardware.

Re:The price the phone to the users

[arekq]

Good points.
I always wonder, when people sees other people with luxury phone having lots of diamonds on it, would they envy about it? or just think: "idiots"?

Re:The price the phone to the users

[sydneyfong]

If you're building a phone for executives ONLY, then make it a $1000 phone. ...

But the problem is that Apple, Samsung and HTC are all making really, really good hardware, and selling it for $200 -- a tenth of the cost. And for all of RIM's wizardry, they aren't going to beat Apple.

If you throw away the carrier contract, the high end smart phones do cost almost $1000 at retail. Just go to a non-US online store of the handsets and check their prices.

Re:The price the phone to the users

[mikael]

About the only things they could do would be to make the case from platinum, silver or gold, and then support satellite communications for when you are out of range of a mobile network, and multiple SIM cards. Maybe a leather and gold leaf wallet to put it in.

Re:The price the phone to the users

[mjwx]

If you're building a phone for executives ONLY, then make it a $1000 phone.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha,

Oh dreaming heavens, you've never worked with executives have you. They don't buy $1000 phones. They buy "Free on a contract" phones then have a way to weasel out of the contract. Same with the Porche or Beamer. It's financed in a way that the entire price is used as a tax dodge (for fucks sake, as a regular Joe I did the same thing buying a used Integra, paid via a zero interest business loan and used that against my taxes).

A lot of executive time is spent avoiding costs in an executives life.

Re:The price the phone to the users

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like he's never heard of Samuel Vimes' "Boots Theory" of economics.

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[WiiVault]

While I do appreciate you letting us know the potential of BB10, I think where you are mistaken is expecting RIM to do anything intelligent to take advantage of these possibilities and strengths. QNX is solid, and the one phone to rule them all is very nifty. But with the people running RIM none of this matters. The thought of them having the foresight to follow your suggestions is just unrealistic. It's sad in a way that BB10 like WebOS will likely be remembered for what it could have been, had management not been so out of touch. I pray that you are right and I'm wrong though. Because we need more than 2 players, and Microsoft's mobile strategy makes RIM's look sane and measured by comparison.

It's funny

[FranTaylor]

People talk about problems with android, and yet these problems are precisely where companies like RIM can differentiate themselves, by solving these problems.

Re:It's funny

[GodfatherofSoul]

I think there's HUGE potential for a 3rd vendor. Don't treat your customers like they're in an involuntary Facebook profiling network like Google does and don't take on an authoritarian attitude like Apple does. But, the DOs are what's tough. iPhones are great because of the UI, not because fanboys are brainwashed. Android is great because of the openness of development. How you bring all that together isn't exactly easy.

Re:It's funny

[FranTaylor]

No it's not easy, but having market share, brain trust, and a trusted brand name can sure make it a lot easier.

Re:It's funny

[tapspace]

iPhones are great because of the UI, not because fanboys are brainwashed..

You must be new here

Re:It's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need to find the UI-designers in the open source crowd. Just look how great the UI is compared to the underlying technology in Firefox. Oh, right...

it's called selective ignorance

[poetmatt]

They chose ignorance. The choice was adopt or die. That decision needed to be made almost 10 years ago. Goodbye, RIMjobs. It's proof that the executive management is a complete and utter failure as a whole.

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, you think that a little thing called "being legal" will stop companies from suing one poor little guy out of existence?

You're a funny man / woman.

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[Erbo]

You're right, of course. I cited Karl Denninger's March posting in my original post; he has posted about RIMM ten times since then, and in each of those pieces he has called on RIMM to open the platform to GAPPS. They have done no such thing, and the stock price continues to dwindle.

Soon, the only reasonable asset they'll have left will be their patent portfolio...and the best way for one of the other players to acquire that will be to wait and buy it from the bankruptcy judge.

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[oakgrove]

(Which is true; the QNX kernel of BB10 is far more efficient in an embedded environment than Android's Linux kernel is. This translates into increased battery life.)

Yeah that's why the Kindle Fire despite being very similar hardware to the Playbook and the Fire having a grossly overloaded interface gets better battery life than the Playbook. Where's the "efficiency" going? Calculating fractals in the background?

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[Erbo]

All the more reason for RIMM to put their still-considerable weight behind this technology, which can only benefit them.

However, since they won't even take the far-easier step of opening BB10 up to GAPPS...draw your own conclusions.

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[Erbo]

I can't speak to the Fire, but I know that Denninger compared the battery life of a Playbook and a Galaxy 2 7.0 tablet:

Side by side, both starting with a 100% charge, the Playbook while idle lasts a workweek with light use before the red light starts flashing at me, telling me I have to plug it in.

The Galaxy tab lost 30% of its charge in 10 hours overnight sitting in a sleeve while asleep with nothing running in the background -- no apps, no push email, nothing.

Now take both on a trip and tell me this doesn't matter. If you whip it out to use it at a customer site and it's dead it sure as hell does matter. And this is exactly the sort of massive advantage that I was talking about when it comes to QNX .vs. Android (and IOS.) [...]

It would be interesting to run this same comparison of the Playbook's battery life versus the Kindle Fire, or perhaps the Nexus 7. But I'm not sure a comparison between the Fire and the Playbook is all that valid, because they're designed and intended for two different purposes (the Fire for E-reading and media consumption, the Playbook for "business" use).

unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful

[logicassasin]

I had already started a scathing rebuttal until I read this:

"Hell... a monopoly is great thing..."

no mutton for you this day troll...

He is righ about differentiating suppliers

[MobyDisk]

If you look at other suppliers’ ability to differentiate, there’s very little wiggle room.

This is very true. Android device manufacturers can't figure out how to advertise their own devices. The ads often point out things like "The Droid Fooboo is a great social networking phone because it comes with the FaceBook app pre-installed" or "Videoconference with your family..." even though these are features available on any Android device. It also doesn't help that they release new phones every 3 - 6 months it confuses the market even more.

I didn't say anything about selling phones

[logicassasin]

... Only what people classified as a real "Smartphone". Around the offices I've worked in, the default was either a BB, PalmOS, or Windows Mobile device. Symbian is great, but in the US market, you'll get more "what's that?" responses than you will actual people that know what it is. Honestly, the only Symbian phone I can remember being sold stateside is the old Nokia N-Gage, but I'm well aware of the platform and it's capabilities (even having seen an unlocked Nokia E5 in use by a former colleague, he gushed over it endlessly)

Book Kindle

[logicassasin]

" If you like to read novels, nothing beets e-ink because its easy on your eyes and on the battery.

Personally paper + ink beats it all day, every day. No batteries needed and they can last for centuries.

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yes, great advertisement for blackberry: Its the phone to use, if you don't use your phone much at all.

Re:Book Kindle

[FranTaylor]

paper and ink lasts for centuries? It won't last the wash cycle in my jeans

Yeah well apparently not seriously enough.

[DrPeper]

Goodbye RIM, no one will remember you in 3 years.

Re:Yeah well apparently not seriously enough.

[gnasher719]

Goodbye RIM, no one will remember you in 3 years.

RIM will be remembered in text books for the next 50 years, as an example how to go from market leader to insignificant in a very short time.

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[Anonymous Coward]

The Playbook and the Fire are virtually identical and made by the same manufacturer so it is by far the best comparison to make. If you are going to go by the Galaxy Tab 2 then why not go with the 7.7 version that gets almost 13 hours of life?

Worrying trends in technology

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

There is a trend that is starting to repeat itself:

1) PC's used to push the bleeding edge for performance, consumers took a decided step backwards for significantly slower and less feature rich phones and tablets. PC market is dying.

2) Game PC/Consoles used to push the boundaries of bleeding edge, but consumers took a decided step back to play raster based "touch and fling" style games. Game PC/Console market is dying.

3) BlackBerry pushed bleeding edge enterprise features and dedicated business tools, but consumers took a decided step backwards using a device adequate for their business needs, placing content consumption needs first. BlackBerry market is dying.

Consumers are opting for "mediocre" products in terms of performance and features.

What happened to the geeks? They used to carry around 18 lb laptops because it was the only thing any self respecting Geek would use, now all the Geeks have become trendy hipsters ordering lattes on a device that are less powerful then their HP Pocket Calculators from a decade ago.

Seems like the Luddites have won, opting for pretty devices they peel cling film off of, use for a few months, and then discard for the next shinny bobble that comes along. Nobody cares about performance anymore, nobody cares about dedicated features. Nobody cares for bleeding edge. The market has turned towards the "Gleaming" edge, the shiniest device wins these days regardless of what is inside it.

So while I respect RIM for attempting to maintain some credibility and respect by not bending to market trends and focusing on the needs and requirements of their core consumers, unfortunately that is not going to save their company. If they have moved to Android with a few "RIM" signature applications, put it into a shiny leather wrapped AndroidBerry they may have been able to thrive in today's market.

Re:Worrying trends in technology

[mikael]

I've read Byte magazine since the 1970's, when the geekiest thing was to spend evenings running Life simulations at 32x32 resolutions. Back then, the S-100 rack system was the coolest thing to own. Users typically came to think that "big was best". IT directors would compete to have the largest department, the largest mainframe, the most number of rack units in their telecoms room. That carried on for a while as electronics miniaturized, you'd find a whole vertical rack dedicated to a single circuit board, with some loud noisy fans and an access cover only removable by a qualified engineer from the corporation.

When the PC came along in the mid 1980's, that carried onto to some extent with those tall tower units for servers. But IT directors saw that mini-desktop units were easier to manage and if nothing else made good monitor stands. They also liked their Filofaxes and pagers.

Desktop PC's have tried to become smaller, but they have power problems with the most powerful GPU boards. For the past 5 or 6 years, PC computers started to slip when there weren't any new killer applications for the CPU - word processing, WYSIWYG editing, spreadsheets, web browsing, video editing can all be done on a regular PC or laptop. On the GPU side, there has been a massive advances in lighting, geometry rendering, instancing, texture mapping (compression, resolution, bit-depth), shaders, super-scalar architectures, texture RAM and video resolutions.

Then the big clunky mobile phones and "luggable" computers came along. Those were popular too. Over time Nokia miniaturized those and added the LCD screen. That evolved to LED screens, which slowly became larger. SMS messaging replaced paging. Cameras were added, and then you could take pictures, make movies. Even back then, the worst thing to happen to a geek or yuppie, would be to lose their Filofax. It would be the corporate version of having brain damage.

In the 1990's, Palm came out with the Palm Pilot PDA, which had basic text input with a stylus and docking with a PC, and helped replace the Filofax.Those "luggables" became laptops with LCD screens. Eventually those screens became larger and had better color resolution. It was possible to make them mobile network devices by adding wireless broadband dongles, but even then battery power only lasts an hour or two, and you couldn't remain in contact if you were on
a train or bus. So the Filofax/PDA merged with the mobile phone and became the tablet. The laptop has had to become the ultrabook.

But the rate of change was so fast that many consumer magazines recommended that the general consumer was better off buying a low-end £2000. If you do that, then you can buy a system every 2 years, rather than one every 4 years.

BBM??

[787style]

For Heins, RIM’s ace in the hole is BlackBerry Messenger, which he says delivers mobile messaging capabilities that are unique in the smartphone market. “[BBM is] what attracts people to BlackBerry,” he said. “This is our BlackBerry experience we can deliver — there’s no other system out there where you can read, write, check if you’ve read my message. We want to make it as differentiated as possible. Going cross platform and opening up would be losing that advantage. I think there’s a huge difference between somebody who just provides the phone and the hardware and someone who provides services.”

Did someone note give Heins the memo about iMessage which gives a identical BBM experience integrated with the SMS app?

Mod me a troll if you like, but it's true

[Tarlus]

...but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base: it’s all about getting stuff done.

Not with that clunky, tedious interface.

Games, media, we have to be good at it, but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content — if you stay true to that purpose you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can’t do it on a me-too approach.

That's just the thing, though. They could modify Android and tailor it to be as business-oriented and distraction-free as they wish. It can have their own flavor of usability and features. Its home screen could look just like BB OS. And it can have BES compatibility. For what Android is packing under the hood, I think it offers a huge advantage over their existing OS.

Re:Mod me a troll if you like, but it's true

[ChunderDownunder]

Their existing OS? That's the point - RIM saw the writing on the wall several years ago. They bought QNX, added an Android portability layer, integrated Qt.

You're comparing their legacy OS. BB10 isn't out yet.

Remarkably stupid.

[sidragon.net]

It is difficult to fathom how incredibly ignorant this person is. If I understand this correctly, he believes his company had to produce its own operating system in order to satisfy specific customers who are interested more in work than play.

Oh, the irony.

“Getting stuff done” happens with the software users interact with. The kernel and development environment do not matter to your end-users. Applications do.

This is the same old story of how everyone wants to reinvent the wheel. “Oh, yes! We should make our own language, and libraries, and stack!” Utter nonsense. He, like many other misguided leaders in our industry, created massive amounts of totally redundant work for his engineers, and—even worse—isolated them from communities that could act as force multipliers on their efforts.

Great job, Heins.

Clue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe having 1,000 different smart phones in the market is unnecessary?

Re:Book Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither will e-ink devices

Why didn't RIM switch?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Android is going to catch on in the business world.

It could have... if RIM has switched to Android. It should have been clear to the company that BlackBerry 10 has no future in a world where Android and iOS are backed by multi-billion revenue giants and hundreds of millions of users and programmers worldwide.

RIM had plenty of phone and software design experience to be ~incredibly~ successful. They could have made their own business environment on Android. They have software experience; they could have made secure, encrypted e-mail and messaging apps, encrypted VOIP phone app, and any other business-oriented programs they wanted. They had phone design experience, so they could have designed their phones and software to work together. They would be able to make phones with exactly the specs to run their software best, and they would be able to optimize their software especially for the phones that they make.

They could have made money both on software and on hardware. They could have sold their secure messaging, voip, and other business apps on the Google Play store. They could additionally have made high-quality, classy business phones with extra security and permissions features--other vendors modify Android with Motoblur, Sense, etc... RIM could have made the BlackBerry variation. Businesses that want to give their employees all a set phone that they couldn't tinker with would be able to purchase the "BlackBerry® Android" phones, set them up how they like, and then lock them down and give them to their employees.

Apple doesn't make business-oriented products. There are no business-oriented Android phone lines, either. Unlike iOS, Android OS allows the freedom for RIM to easily modify it and add features as they see fit, and if they made Android phones, they'd have an additional market of Android users that might purchase their software.

They could have had a premium business lineup of Android phones, known for their extra security features and known to run the BlackBerry apps especially well.

-1 working the mods mod

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot, you know the mods can only respond anonymously.

RIM is clueless

[Eravnrekaree]

RIM should have gone with its own modified version of Android, called it Android -compatable, adding whatever features it believes are so necessary. There are far too many wireless platforms out there for developers to support. This means that weaker platforms like blackberry will die unless they start to support apps from android. RIMs decision will likely harm the blackberry.

Re:RIM is clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackberry bought QNX in 2010. At the time, Android was still pretty much a blackberry knock-off. It wasn't until later that Android started blatantly copying iOS and became successful.

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[Anonymous Coward]

(Which is true; the QNX kernel of BB10 is far more efficient in an embedded environment than Android's Linux kernel is. This translates into increased battery life.)

Please stop regurgitating marketing propaganda as if it's meaningful. The combination of UI framework and application software design is often every bit as important as the kernel. All these kernels are reasonably good at shutting hardware down when it's idle, which is much of what can be gained at that layer, so a lot of it's about higher layers giving the kernel more opportunities to save power.

They could go further, too. One enterprising hacker has gotten (some) unmodified iOS apps to run on the Playbook. And it's perfectly legal, because the developer has just created his own implementations of relevant Apple APIs, and, under the ruling in Oracle v. Google, APIs are not copyrightable and Apple can't stop him. RIMM should acquire or license this technology and extend it to work with more iOS apps, and promote the hell out of this capability, too. Imagine being able to run virtually any popular smart phone app on one phone...

From the article: "Right now it works best with apps like games, but apps that need UIWebView and CoreData, not so much yet.".

Reading between the lines, the hacker has done simple passthrough for crossplatform APIs like OpenGL, covering 90% (or more) of what games want to call at runtime without having to reimplement any of it from scratch. He's also emulated just enough non-GL API calls to get the handful of apps he's tested up and running. This makes for a neat demo but is a long way away from full API emulation which can run any app, especially non-games.

A quick & dirty demo can look really impressive but it might represent 5% of the work needed to make something generally useful. And when you're talking about API emulation, there's the additional problem of always trailing a moving target. And when you're specifically talking about iOS API emulation, the problem of how to legally get iOS apps from the Apple App Store onto non-Apple devices also looms.

with better battery life than either Android phones or the iPhone. (QNX beats the iOS Darwin kernel for efficiency, too.)

Once again, you know this how? Please, no fanboyism, no "everybody knows QNX is super efficient because EMBEDDED!!!".

Also, account for the fact that API emulation inevitably involves some inefficiency.

Also, account for the fact that there's good reasons to expect Darwin to be power efficient based on its background. Apple has been optimizing for power since the dawn of OS X, since even back then (long before conceiving of iDevices) they believed the future of their company was going to be laptops, not desktops.

If RIMM does these two things, they could go from zero to hero in one fell swoop.

History has an example of a major OS which began relying on API emulation because it couldn't otherwise attract enough developers. The outcome isn't necessarily as rosy as you imply. In the case I'm thinking of, OS/2, it was even pretty good in its own right, was backed by an industry titan with enormous influence, and enjoyed a fanatical evangelistic userbase. Yet it still withered and died. The "OS/2 is a better Windows than Windows" era may even have worked against OS/2 by discouraging developers from doing native ports (which, no matter how good the API emulation, are still better for end users).

Re:BB10 can already run Android apps...and maybe m

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't speak to the Fire, but I know that Denninger

From that link: "General-purpose Unix kernels, of which Linux and IOS's Berkley base both are simply are not and will never be optimized for mobile, power-restricted devices where every milliwatt-hour matters. QNX was built to be tight and efficient from the start and it remains so."

Well, that just proves this Denninger guy is ignorant in several ways.

1. QNX started out being called "QUNIX" because it was a lightweight or "quick" implementation of UNIX for the IBM PC. (They had to change the name because AT&T got unhappy about their trademark being included in "QUNIX".)

2. iOS is built on Darwin, which is not a "Berkeley base". Yeah, there's some BSD code in there, but there's lots of Mach code too. More to the point, lots of Darwin (notably including all the power management) is NeXT/Apple original code.

3. Speaking of power management, QNX historically didn't have it any more than BSD or AT&T or the original versions of Linux did. Like all those systems, QNX got its start on decidedly non-portable grid-powered hardware with no power management features at all. (And I really mean none. Not even so much as idle sleep modes for the CPU.)

4. It's pretty unlikely that there's any bad juju which prevents any given UNIX-ish kernel from ever being made power efficient. They all have to solve roughly the same problems using broadly similar APIs. This guy Denninger seems to have you firmly convinced that QNX has Special Magick. It doesn't.

Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

We, who where?

The Fancy Space People... from space!

Of course.

Pay attention, man!

Too bad about Android

[eudaemon]

I carried a blackberry for years, both personally and corporate issued ones, and loved what they could do for me. The e-mail client and their address book are still untouched by Android. By contrast my corporate-issued ipad with Good stinks. Seriously it has the worst interface for searching e-mail I've ever seen! Not even on the level of 80's text only e-mail clients like ELM and PINE. Ugh. Blackberry needs to switch to their own Android hardware - they can make it as secure as they like and bring their own apps to the platform, while hopefully integrating the "Android way" of doing things. I loved my BB, but my first Android device which ran 1.5 (ancient by today's standards) made me realize what I was missing on the BB. Android's multitasking and automated app integration was an epiphany in user design. On my old BB if I took a picture, that was it. I took a picture. Then I switched to whatever app I wanted to use the photo with - the facebook app, the twitter app and then typically had to navigate that app's interface to share the photo. Contrast that with Android's approach of extending the camera app's "share" button with a new icon for any new application that can share photos. Blackberry's hardware security and their apps melded with Android would be an unbeatable combination. And let's face it - they could sell insecure versions in the Android app store and clean up.

fips cert

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah switch to android, and loose the FIPS certification.. then you even abandon the law enforcement that still uses them.
Why they hired this german to run RIM is beyond me, i doubt apple could pay him enough to run RIM into the ground... right.

Completely backwards

[michealPW]

Wow, what an upside-down world the RIM Executives must live in.

Seriously, my wife and I have owned many different BlackBerries and our experience has been the same old song-'n-dance... The Software and Services are supurb... But the hardware is complete garbage. BlackBerries have notoriously suffered from hardware faults/failures. I can still remember the FIRST time the Trackball fell out.

It wasn't until working for an International Inventory company that I really seen the BlackBerry shine.. It's the software! The ecosystem of software and services that RIM offers was (At the time..) untouchable. Apple offered nothing even remotely like it for massive, international corporations like RIM did. Android was pretty new on the scene, too. Now the RIM execs think they should ditch the Software stack and move to Android? Uhmm... What? Shouldn't they ditch their garbage hardware manufacturing department and hire HTC, Samsung or Motorolla to make their devices and RIM load their software on them? This would also allow RIM to lease/license their software to other companies, such as Apple. Seriously the more I think about this the more I think RIM's only problem is a dire need to whipe their board of Execs and refresh it with fresh thinkers.. RIM isn't the problem, their management is! :|