BlackBerry To Allow Rivals To Manage Its Smartphones

jfruh (300774) writes "BlackBerry broke its longstanding business model recently by announcing that its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 management platform would be able to manage not just BlackBerry devices, but Android and iOS gadgets as well. Now, in a new announcement, the company is also exploring the flipside of that coin, allowing software from other companies to manage BlackBerry phones. The moves acknowledge a world in which fewer and fewer people are interested in a vertical BlackBerry solution — but also seem to kill the last things that make BlackBerry special."

Comments

Death throes ..

[gstoddart]

RIM/BlackBerry has been in decline for years.

The stuff they played a role in pioneering are now pretty much commodities. They rested on their laurels for way too long, and eventually got lapped by the rest of the market. Apple and Android have huge market shares compared to what BlackBerry still has.

They've been laying off people, closing buildings, and putting out products hardly anybody buys, and they've been saddled with ineffective management for years.

They're well on their way to becoming a footnote. Their founders all got rich and moved on.

What we're watching is the dying days of a once cool company.

Sad to see them go, but this is largely a mess of their own creation, even if they don't realize it.

I know people who owned their PlayBook tablet -- and, quite frankly, they were crap. There was nothing in the store, their Android support was a joke, and then they stopped giving updates for it. I'm betting most of the people who ever owned that tablet wouldn't ever own another product from them.

Re:Death throes ..

[Rigel47]

Thanks for regurgitating everything that has gone wrong. It's easy and popular these days to prognosticate that BlackBerry is doomed because stock price, market share, bad press, blah blah. Unfortunately for your ilk BlackBerry is under new management and is executing a number of moves that are different from anything in the past.

Partnering with Foxconn, introducing the Z3, the device management moves described here, BBM on all platforms, etc, are just a few.

BlackBerry remains unrivalled in device security (for sure the facebook crowd won't care), has awesome battery life, and has the smoothest mobile operating system I've ever used. Yes, full disclosure, I own a Z10. Literally the only drawback is that it doesn't have a few apps that might be handy (my banking app most notably). That written the support for Android apps grows and you can now install 'droid apps right out of the play store.

Certainly it's true that BB could still be doomed but commentary like yours is essentially the chatter of the Monday morning quarterback.

Re:Death throes ..

[gstoddart]

Certainly it's true that BB could still be doomed but commentary like yours is essentially the chatter of the Monday morning quarterback.

I remember when RIM was a smallish company operating mostly out of one office. I remember watching RIM soar and become huge. And I've spent several years watching them decline, the founders leave, and management floundering. I've known several people who worked there over the years.

Do I claim to be Warren Buffet and know exactly what will happen to them? Of course not.

Is it my opinion that they may never be able to pull themselves out of this slide? Yup, this is a similar pattern to when Nortel keeled over. Going from high flying, high priced and infallible, to tanking, shedding customers, assets and income is what I'm seeing.

In the words of Principal Skinner ... "Prove me wrong children. Prove me wrong."

You believe RIM/BB will recover. That's OK. The executives do as well.

I don't have any financial interest in RIM/BB, you may or may not. In a few years, one of us will be right, and one of us will be wrong.

But my belief is that they're running out of the things which differentiated them, playing catch up to a market they helped create, and have been bleeding market share and revenues.

So, if I was laying money on the line in this, I'd not be betting on them to succeed.

And, at the end of the day, my "Monday morning quarterbacking" carries about as much meaning as your "Wednesday morning cheer leading". Two random, insignificant opinions.

Re:Death throes ..

[ArhcAngel]

I use current BB products, issued by my company. And they do surprise me. As in "why the hell is my company spending good money on junk like this?!?" Similar to a decent smartphone? Hardly. The ones with real keyboards are glorified feature phones. And those of use that want a decent smartphone will buy one from a decent smartphone vendor.

Since you didn't specify what device you are using I will assume from your comment you are using a BB OS 7 device which the OP indicated was a several years old device. I highly doubt you are are using a BB OS 10 device since current gen BB OS 10 phones (even the Z10 is over a year old.) can run the bulk of Android apps while maintaining the devices security. The Z30 uses the same Snapdragon S4 Pro chip as the Moto X and a host of other devices meaning it can hang with the big dogs just fine. BlackBerry has done a commendable job re-engineering the ideas from the original BB OS into a next generation OS ready to compete with the modern mobile world.

License the keyboard

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

That might produce some additional revenue. They're suing the makers of a look a like solution for the iphone. Why not just take a cut of everyone that wants to do it, and help them do it as well? It might revitalize physical keyboard handsets.

They're still special

[mysidia]

but also seem to kill the last things that make BlackBerry special.

You think the competing management platforms driven to be as generic as possible and manage multiple vendors' phones will be "better" at managing BB devices, than their own product?

I see a few ways this may not hurt BB... (1) It makes their smartphones more attractive, if they will be compatible with customers' existing management solution.

(2) Potential licensing fees from developers of management software for access to SDKs and advanced APIs.

and (3) They may still provide superior manageability/functionality for their own management platform, by using undocumented APIs, or by introducing new APIs to their devices and management platform simultaneously --- so they always leverage new management and security features first..

Re:its actually pretty great news.

[LordLimecat]

BES was always finicky, but generally issues I recall seeing tended to be self inflicted. Im not sure what you mean by "they changed cryptography keys"-- the entire point of the BES is that the company alone holds the per-device keys, and if they change its because someone did something with their profile.

Calling BES awful when there basically werent any viable competitors for ~10 years is a bit ridiculous. Sure there was activesync, but that was even more finicky and screwed up, and until recently (last ~5 years) anything else was just a nightmare to manage. Anyone ever have the joy of trying to get an iPhone 3 hooked up to a server with a self-signed cert?