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Is BlackBerry Launching an Android Phone?
An anonymous reader writes: According to a Reuters report BlackBerry may launch an Android phone with a hardware keyboard. If true, it's a definite shift in their business model. "We don't comment on rumors and speculation, but we remain committed to the BlackBerry 10 operating system, which provides security and productivity benefits that are unmatched," said the company in an email. Google declined to comment.
It's only what consumers have been asking for since the release of Android...
Fifteen birds in five fir trees,
their feathers were fanned in a fiery breeze!
what funny little birds, they had no wings!
Oh what shall we do with the funny little things?
Roast 'em alive, or stew them in a pot;
fry them, boil them and eat them hot?
Burn, burn tree and fern!
Shrivel and scorch! A fizzling torch
To light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!
Bake and toast 'em, fry and roast â(TM)em!
till beards blaze, and eyes glaze;
till hair smells and skins crack,
fat melts, and bones black
in cinders lie
beneath the sky!
So dwarves shall die,
and light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!
Ya-harri-hey!
Ya hoy!
This rumor comes up every year. There would be no advantage to them releasing an Android device. They wouldn't get any cut of app sales, they can't control Android security (which is an absolute joke), and people still won't buy it because it's a BB.
I'm a die hard BB fan. I've had 6 or 7 BB devices since 2004 (currently a Z10 running 10.3.1) and I'm a 10+ year BES admin. The BlackBerry 10 OS is solid, secure and fast. Give it time. A lot of time. It already runs most Android apps.
Android is a mess. It varies wildly between phone manufacturers and it is dominated by 2 or 3 companies. Don't go down that path.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
From the moment I heard that they were going with QNX I knew that they were making a massive mistake. But when I said this all kinds of people jumped on me and got all buthurt defending QNX. I thought that Android was the way to go from the moment iPhone started to eat their lunch. My main problems with QNX were that the only person that I knew who loved it was a complete tool. Plus why not do effectively what Apple did when they adopted BSD as the core. Pick something that works and run with it. Apple had their old creaky OS, had just failed doing a deal with another OS company and then just jumped into BSD. That gave them magical powers such as being able to easily make the leap to Intel and ARM or whatever they want. Android would provide the same magic power of portability.
But I still think that BB doesn't know what their customers really want. They are still trying to please the IT departments, the telcos, and their enterprise customers. They should instead be trying to win over the individual even if that individual happens to be in the enterprise. So don't allow things like security profiles where the IT department can effectively trash the phone. Otherwise the modern executive will go buy an iPhone/Android and not put up with that crap.
Then there are other features that they should offer by default such as massive batteries. The BB users that I know would happily add a few mm to triple or more their battery life. I know there are addons but why not just make them a default option. BB people are on the road and can get fired or lose business if their phone goes dark. Plus screw all the touch screen BBs. People buy them for their keyboards. As long as the font is large enough for blind boomers the phone will sell in droves.
Have an open mind. Embrace a new strategy. The Blackberry OS was 1% of market share in 2014. (Android >75%)
Take care of your greatest remaining asset: your people. That priority can be best accomplished with a return to solvency.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Ever tried finding a phone with decent specs AND a physical keyboard? Protip: They don't really exist! If I could get something with the specs of a One Plus One (for example) as a slider model, I would have already purchased two of them and I believe many other like me would as well!
wat?
1) Stabalize
2) Focus on enterprise
Now:
3) Growth and possibly go after consumer.
Of course this makes sense. They'll still have BB10 for the business side where security matters. They OS is in more than phones. It's in 50%+ of all new cars. It's here to stay and they have to maintain it.
I am headed over the Register...
That would be a real shame.
I know I'm in the tiny minority, but I actually own a device with the Blackberry 10 OS and it's pretty frickin' awesome actually. It can already run Android apps through an emulation layer that ships on top of the Blackberry OS.
You guys might enjoy mocking Blackberry for its irrelevance in the US marketplace, but I wonder how many of you have actually used the latest OS. It would be a real shame to see this solid tech die.
Make the company solvent. Free Cash FLow Positive is a term for this. They attained this goal.
Now they can work on growth. You can bleed cash and try to defeat iOS or Android.
You need to stabilize the company. You do that by focusing on your core competencies and cutting costs.
Then you work on a growth strategy. Welcome to summer 2015. They are starting to work towards the growth strategy. And that may or may not include Android.
Say that is "Too Late" is not enough.
I think people would be surprised how many users still want a decent android phone with a keyboard. I still have my droid4. It is not uncommon for me to get comments from strangers like "wow, I wish I still had a phone like that" whenever I'm typing away. Good on BlackBerry if they can pull it off, I know I'm not alone in hoping this isn't a rumor.
...is that if Blackberry pulls it off, Apple should also do the same thing and release an Android phone. Then Google should make their next Nexus phone have Windows 10. And the Microsoft version of Nokia should release a webOS phone too.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Isn't Blackberry typically a "businessman's" phone? I don't know anyone that has a cell phone that has one of these....The last person I knew worked IT and it was a company issued phone, and that was years ago. But, hey why not....they may need to touch base with the "normal" folks now.
http://americans.org/2015/06/12/blackberry-is-going-to-start-putting-android-on-its-awesome-smartphones/
I have owned Blackberry devices in the past and currently own an Android phone. I have always loved hardware keyboards and for the longest time insisted on phones with hardware keyboards including Android phones. However, over time, I have observed that software keyboards have improved a lot. And I mean a lot. To the point that I no longer wish to dedicate precious real estate on my phone to a hardware keyboard.
Hardware keyboard is an idea that is now dead on mobile phones. It will never (I usually advise my kids to never say never but I am making an exception here) be popular on mobile phones again. It takes too much space and many can type faster on a software keyboard. Speech recognition function has also come a long way. And usually, for me, that is the fastest way to enter text.
Actually, you're dead wrong, except for the fact that Blackberry is probably way too late for this to make a difference.
Blackberry should have released an Android phone YEARS ago instead of dumping tons of money into BBOS 10. If they would have instead spent that money on Android by adding working full device crypto and out of the box BES support, they would have dominated the enterprise market and also been able to move into consumer by touting the privacy features.
Instead, they wasted all their time and resources writing this other OS that no one wants to write apps for and implementing an Android emulator on top of it because it is the only way to get anything decent. It was a horrible, stupid move from beginning to end.
And before you say "hindsight is 20/20", I have been saying Blackberry should move to Android since 2011.
Move over Golden Girls, a new favorite spam troll is in town.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Well at least it is Friday, so the timing is right.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
> which provides security and productivity benefits that are unmatched
"Apples just don't get viruses!"
Yeah... until the user base grows enough for it to be profitable, that is. TempleOS doesn't get viruses either!
I won't say much more than that, except that I've seen the prototype.
... I hear Ryan Seacrest tried to launch an Blackberry Keyboard on iOS. Because you know, no one wants a Blackberry! ROFL. Even Scott McNealy has one. Because everything else is still a toy.
Just saying.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If BB released a landscape slider phone running BB10, I'd be interested! BB10 intrigues me, but the hardware they've released so far doesn't; hard to justify a downgrade from an LG G2 just for an different OS. I want a keyboard, but not that badly.
If BB released a landscape slider phone running Android 5.x, I'd be even more interested! We need some hardware differentiation between OEMs. Right now, all Android phones are rectangular slabs with touchscreens. Whoop-de-doo! Bring back the hardware innovation, OEMs! You've stagnated. When 2-3 generations of phones are released with barely any changes in the design or the hardware, you know things are going downhill.
The next OEM to release a landscape slider with at least flagship-1 internal hardware (ie Snapdragon S801/S805 level) gets my business.
It's far more likely that they'll just be getting Google Play certification so that more native Android apps can run on their devices and they can use the Google Play store as a storefront for apps.
I hung onto my WebOS Pre 3 phone until I could no longer find any more Verizon devices on ebay (the last one I cannabilized two broken ones into one working one). For the last few years I was trying to find a suitable replacement. I tried iOS, Android, and Windows phones but none could match the elegance of WebOS (yes, I know that all stole many features from it over the years). I ended up with a BB10 device which provides a well thought out design. It feels like it might be what WebOS would be if development didn't stop. It's "Just Type" implementation is superb. BB10 seems to be the same whipping boy in the media that helped kill WebOS.
Personally, I think this is a rumor due to the "Knox" security created by Blackberry for Samsung Android phones. How many times has the media reported falsely that Blackberry is about to be bought by Samsung, Microsoft, etc. John Chen has shown vision and grace in dealing with the detractors, even when they take things he says out of context and make him look like he's giving up on Blackberry. He's not afraid to push the envelope on phone designs, just look at the Passport. I'm hoping that the slider keyboard phone that comes out this year will be a Pre 3 killer and available on Verizon. It may be enough for me to leave Verizon if their customer sales and support bad-mouth it like they always do for anything that isn't Android or Apple.
If you like your Android or Apple phone then fine, but don't bash something just because it's not mainstream. I can guarantee that Blackberry phone and BB10 features are already being copied as we speak.
Most of my phones had hardware keyboard, my favorite was Nokia E7. Now that Nokia sold their mobile phone production to MS I don't think there will be again anything similar... Although I would be interested in a BB android phone with hardware keyboard I don't think it will ever be as good as the Nokia E7 was.
They are not committed to BlackBerry 10. Proof is they stopped development in Qt5 for BBX half a year ago. They are stuck with Qt4, which is out-of-support already. Smells bad.