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BlackBerry's Survival Plan: the Internet of Things
jfruh writes BlackBerry's smartphone business is famously floundering, but the company isn't betting everything on its new retro physical-keyboard phones. It's also making moves into distributed, embedded, and asset-tracking computing for homes, cars, and businesses, which can all be lumped under the currently trendy "Internet of Things" buzzword umbrella. The company got a head start when it acquired the QNX OS in 2010, which was intended as the basis of a new smartphone OS but which already had credibility in the embedded market.
"The Internet of Things" is so dumb. It was never called "The Internet of Computers" when computers were hooked up, and technically all these "things" have computers in them. And a network exists in the ether between devices; communication. I'm just so tired of this buzz phrase, I cringe every time I hear it. It's like "Information Superhighway", except less relate-able .
Somewhere between "impossible" and "as easy as throwing a chair across the room."
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I think it depends on the size of the company and more importantly the culture.
I worked at a much smaller company that did a very effective shift for honestly many of the same reasons. We saw the writing on the wall. Other (much larger) companies were stepping into our niche and basically wiping us out. We couldn't fight them and we knew it.
Much like Blackberry is doing, we looked at what we were actually good at, and shifted our business around them. Culturally pretty much everyone knew it was that or we were all out of work.
As the article says, blackberry wasn't always just about phones. They've got some other solid areas (not to mention infrastructure that probably makes even google drool). If their culture supports it, they can probably rebuild themselves around that stuff.
"Buzzword Umbrella Corporation"
Google: No results found for "Buzzword Umbrella Corporation".
Quick, someone grab it!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
They still have the best mobile management software out there. Citrix, Good, MobileIron, etc can't touch BB's offerings.
Plus they have QNX which is used in billions of devices around the world. So what if their handhelds aren't popular? Who cares? They will continue to have a niche market in handhelds.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I can see a hundred little bots fouling up your house with this IofT nonsense. one release, no upgrade path, no thought of security built-in, sell 'em and run. I have several candidates, and there is NOT going to be any RJ45 or wifi permissions for them. period.
Oh hi! I'm your new LG refrigerator. Before I unlock the doors, please agree to this EULA and wait half-an-hour while I download the latest firmware!
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
You don't NEED it but I think it's GOOD PRACTICE to have it. Do you trust Windows enough to be sure that no one can access your file shares if they're on the same LAN segment? Do you trust your closed-source TiVo enough to know that the folks at TiVo (or a black hat) can't remote into it and explore your network if they're so inclined? I don't. Why does my TiVo need to be in the same broadcast domain as the file server that contains my complete financial history and e-mail archives going back to 1991?
I have three VLANs. One for completely trusted devices, one for untrusted devices (the Android phone sits on this one, incidentally) that need internet access, and a third one for friends/guests that wish to use my Wi-Fi. They do not talk to each other. There's no reason for them to.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
ask apple
they went from a computer company to a mobile device company. MS is going all cloud. Amazon went from books to a huge cloud business. IBM doesn't make typewriters any more.
it's done all the time
I have two family members that use new Blackberries. One has a model from about 14 months ago and my brother just got one about a month ago. They are both somewhat limited in terms of apps but conversely, they both have stupid amounts of battery life and they Just Work(tm). They're business phones so obviously they aren't getting stressed with Youtube/Netflix/etc. Still, it appears to be a solid product, if probably unsexy to the people always on my lawn.
This literally made my day. Thank you for the image of an ant with a Steve Ballmer head crawling around a maze yelling "Developers, Developers, Developers!!!"
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
I'd fuckin' buy Blackberry Bacon!
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Yeah. those pocketpc devices were great.
fabulous battery life->course, you had to carry around multiple batteries to swap if you actually used it like people use iPhones now
anybody could develop for them->after buying the developer license from Microsoft
buy software from multiple vendors to load onto it->besides the fact that compared to the iPhone now [or even 6 months after the iPhone app store went live], there was basically a rounding error amount of software for it, that you hunt around to find, and then figure out if the software would work on your phone [sorry, no refunds], and if you were a developer, you either had to sell the software yourself [which back then was a huge hassle to handle transactions and then walk the end user through actually getting the software onto the device] or you sold through a carrier or one of a fairly small number of online software sales companies, where you got the short end of the stick of the split [70/30 - 90/10 or worse]. and users had X, which, like iTunes, easily lets you add and remove apps from your pocketpc device. oh wait, no, there was nothing like that. some places had you use text messages to try to download via your data plan [not cheap]
pocketpc ui->who can forget having to poke around small windows-like menus/buttons/etc with a stylus, or moving the mouse with the arrow keys. and you had to have the slide-out keyboard.
WinCE->the only software MS ever put out with the right name: wince The version that shipped on your device was usually the one still on it when you threw it away. Part of the "buy a new phone to get the latest OS" strategy preferred by carriers and hardware makers.
Those were the good old days.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!