Black Sheep Blackberry Blackballed By Business

Posted by timothy on Monday October 22, 2012 @12:06AM from the die-hards-know-disco-is-not-dead dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Nicole Perlroth writes that the BlackBerry, once proudly carried by the high-powered and the elite, has become a magnet for mockery and derision from those with iPhones and the latest Android phones. as Research in Motion clings to less than 5 percent of the smartphone market — down from a dominating 50 percent just three years ago. One of the first steps Marissa Mayer took as Yahoo's newly appointed chief executive to remake the company's stodgy image was to trade in employees' BlackBerrys for iPhones and Androids and although BlackBerrys may still linger in Washington, Wall Street and the legal profession, in Silicon Valley they are as rare as a necktie. BlackBerry outcasts say that, increasingly, they suffer from shame and public humiliation as they watch their counterparts mingle on social networking apps that are not available to them, take higher-resolution photos, and effortlessly navigate streets — and the Internet — with better GPS and faster browsing."

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Email and messaging are no longer enough by sjbe · 2012-10-22 01:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

If you want a no nonsense device with a physical keyboard and superior email and message handling, a BB is still the best.
"No nonsense"? Have you actually used a Blackberry? They do a few things rather well but overall they are almost obnoxiously annoying to use. I'll take any of the better Android phones or an iPhone over any Blackberry any day of the week. My mother uses a fairly recent BB and good grief is it irritating. Oh it can email fine but heaven forbid you want to do anything besides messaging with it including changing settings.
You also have to remember that the devices it is competing against are general purpose computers which happen to be able to make calls. The BB still is in a world where email is the so-called killer app. Things have changed and just email isn't enough anymore. Even if we concede that the BB is better at dealing with email and messaging, the difference is marginal for most people. The advantages of the BB don't even come close to outweighing its deficiencies.