BlackBerry Really Struggling In Android Market (cnet.com)

Once an icon in the smartphone business, BlackBerry is having a hard time transitioning to Android. According to a report on CNET, the company's BlackBerry Priv Android smartphone, citing a high-level executive at AT&T, is really struggling. From the report: AT&T offered a more detailed account of why the Priv has disappointed. BlackBerry and the carrier expected to see demand for an Android phone with a physical keyboard. Instead, most of the buyers were BlackBerry loyalists, the executive said. Those faithful, however, struggled with the transition from the BlackBerry operating system to the Android operating system, leading to a higher-than-expected rate of return. BlackBerry's decision to market the phone as a high-end device also hurt its prospects, the executive said. The Priv initially sold unlocked for $699, above the starting price of the iPhone 6S, which sells for $650. Few premium phones have fared well beyond devices from Apple and Samsung.

Comments

the real story here

[nimbius]

Is that blackberry spent 17 years being the most expensive phone on the planet until Apple, with the lowest quality handsets in the history of north american cellular communications, and the most unreliable corporate email integration since the advent of SMTP, only to emerge unaccountably as a player in the Android marketplace.

at this point RIM is akin to a boardroom full of geriatrics huffing their own farts and insisting that a phone with only 23 million users in the world is somehow expected to be bought at nearly three times the price of a phone with 90 million users in the US alone. That, magically, Blackberry is supposed to commit to and compete with a marketplace that has offered 1080p, N wireless, wimax, NFC, and an open API with a product that still requires a hobbled network of randomly unavailable email proxies for its devices explicit use.