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After reading about it particularly "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry", I think guardiangod

After reading about it particularly "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry", I think guardiangod is correct, but also Verizon and, to a much lesser extent, the whole stock dating scandal. If Verizon hadn't been so gun-ho for an iPhone killer, Blackberry would probably of got to something like the Passport a whole lot faster. They needed to stay in their lane for a bit longer. Their market cap actually hit its max a year after the iPhone. I wouldn't call RIM / Blackberry a meteroic rise. They start in the mid 90's and built up the products in a pretty smart way with each following the next until the total shift of the Storm.

guardiangod 7y ago
I can't get into details, but basically I agree with you. The Storm...was a product of many compromises. But it's only the start of a series of decisions that...
- protomyth 7y ago
  I dearly wish someone would explain the whole idea of why Blackberry built the Playbook. It seems like a product that was so forced with such a confusing development story.
  - frosted-flakes 7y ago
    I've heard that the Playbook was actually in development before Apple's iPad was announced, and after that it got rushed out. I don't remember where I read this (it was a couple of years ago), so I don't know how accurate that is.
  - godzillabrennus 7y ago
    I worked with a VAR when that shipped. They gave us some to try and encourage sales. It was a terribly slow device with poor battery life compared to iPad. I still use the well made power adapter (Micro USB) that came with it to charge devices to this day. Kinda sad seeing that blackberry logo and knowing the tablet was horrible.
  - guardiangod 7y ago
    Not sure how much I can share without giving myself away but... As an active participant in Playbook's entire development from (near) start to end, there were multiple reasons. They weren't good reasons (most of my colleagues had, eh, concerns which got override,) but they somewhat made sense. What happened was that multiple teams (internal and external) screwed up, so much so that the thing's internal was completely redesigned half way through development ie. Switched to a completely different SoC . As another poster noted, their power supplies were great. I still have a couple left around my house. They had to be great partly because of a design oversight....
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    To give BB credit, the playbook was a '1st gen' device for that category, it's really only when compared to Apple, an amazing company with so much to leverage, that the Playbook was bad. If they could have taken more time, it might have been better. But the Playbook product did effectively expose the lack of depth, talent and relevant experience at RIM. I'm ashamed to say.
frosted-flakes 7y ago
The Passport was a phenomenal device, and nothing like it has been built since. Large square screen and big touch sensitive keyboard, but yet still super manageable due to its squat height... if there was a modern Android version I'd go for it in a heartbeat. Not great for watching videos, but it would be super for everything else.
- ColanR 7y ago
  I wonder if it's still worth using, despite the outdated OS.
  - frosted-flakes 7y ago
    If you don't need many apps and are okay with a web browser that hasn't received updates since 2015 or so, then sure. BB10 can run Android apps with its embedded Android runtime, but it's limited to 4.2 Jellybean (from 2012), so a frustrating experience. The BlackBerry App store is still running, but it's pretty much dead, with zero new development. All apps are free now. It would make for a great email + basic usage phone, but not for media consumption. And the camera's not great. I used a BlackBerry Classic that also ran BB10 until December 2017, and I still pick it up from time to time and wish I could still use it. The Classic is unique in that it has three independent input methods, all of which work super well: 1. Touch screen: the BB10 OS is actually designed for touch, with fluid and intuitive gestures. Swipe up to go home, swipe up and to the right to go to the notifications hub (reverse the gesture to just peek), swipe left to pull off a screen layer to go back, swipe down from the top to view the settings pane (standard place for settings in every app). 2. Optical trackpad and hard nav buttons, just like on old BlackBerries. You can fully control the phone without touching the screen (great for when you're wearing thick gloves during winter). Works super well for a mouse pointer in the browser. The trackpad even works reasonably well in Android apps, which weren't designed for it (presumably, it piggy-backed on the accessibility focus stuff). 3. Hardware keyboard: typing experience is great—not necessarily faster, but super precise, and no pop-up keyboard getting in the way. Every app is designed with keyboard shortcuts in mind, and the OS makes discovery super easy, so stuff like [C]omposing an email, scrolling to the [T]op of the page, or scrolling to the [N]ext page in a PDF are single click operations. Modern BlackBerries also have great keyboards, but since they run Android, they have none of the shortcuts (except app shortcuts).
NotPaidToPost 7y ago
My wife got one of the last Blackberries for work a few years back. She had never had one so wanted to try. Build quality was very poor. Overall experience was very poor. She ran back to iPhone as soon as she could. RIM died because their products were poor compared to the competition, it's as simple as that.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
I worked at RIM during the rise/collapse and would indicate the issues were mostly structural, cultural, and competitive. BlackBerry was a small company up against the #1 product of the era (iPhone) and a 'free' competitor. Both companies are basically #1 and #2 brands in the world. They have very deep experience in all things, channels, money etc.. We had no 'mapping team' really, Google had 100 people. iOS is from MacOS. BB had this ancient thing. We were just a tiny company that got clobbered, but frankly, BB was culturally more like 'motorola' than an advanced, well run entity. BB could not compete. RIM started in 1982, not in the 1990's. The 'rise' was quite meteoric when they decided to put email on your hip, and added a phone.
macspoofing 7y ago
I still don't see how in any way Qualcomm was responsible for or contributed to Blackberry's downfall. No doubt that Blackberry sent tons of licensing money to them, but that didn't seem to hold back their crazy growth rate. Neither did it seem to contribute to their downfall.

guardiangod 7y ago

I can't get into details, but basically I agree with you. The Storm...was a product of many compromises. But it's only the start of a series of decisions that...

protomyth 7y ago
I dearly wish someone would explain the whole idea of why Blackberry built the Playbook. It seems like a product that was so forced with such a confusing development story.
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  I've heard that the Playbook was actually in development before Apple's iPad was announced, and after that it got rushed out. I don't remember where I read this (it was a couple of years ago), so I don't know how accurate that is.
- godzillabrennus 7y ago
  I worked with a VAR when that shipped. They gave us some to try and encourage sales. It was a terribly slow device with poor battery life compared to iPad. I still use the well made power adapter (Micro USB) that came with it to charge devices to this day. Kinda sad seeing that blackberry logo and knowing the tablet was horrible.
- guardiangod 7y ago
  Not sure how much I can share without giving myself away but... As an active participant in Playbook's entire development from (near) start to end, there were multiple reasons. They weren't good reasons (most of my colleagues had, eh, concerns which got override,) but they somewhat made sense. What happened was that multiple teams (internal and external) screwed up, so much so that the thing's internal was completely redesigned half way through development ie. Switched to a completely different SoC . As another poster noted, their power supplies were great. I still have a couple left around my house. They had to be great partly because of a design oversight....
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  To give BB credit, the playbook was a '1st gen' device for that category, it's really only when compared to Apple, an amazing company with so much to leverage, that the Playbook was bad. If they could have taken more time, it might have been better. But the Playbook product did effectively expose the lack of depth, talent and relevant experience at RIM. I'm ashamed to say.

frosted-flakes 7y ago

The Passport was a phenomenal device, and nothing like it has been built since. Large square screen and big touch sensitive keyboard, but yet still super manageable due to its squat height... if there was a modern Android version I'd go for it in a heartbeat. Not great for watching videos, but it would be super for everything else.

ColanR 7y ago
I wonder if it's still worth using, despite the outdated OS.
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  If you don't need many apps and are okay with a web browser that hasn't received updates since 2015 or so, then sure. BB10 can run Android apps with its embedded Android runtime, but it's limited to 4.2 Jellybean (from 2012), so a frustrating experience. The BlackBerry App store is still running, but it's pretty much dead, with zero new development. All apps are free now. It would make for a great email + basic usage phone, but not for media consumption. And the camera's not great. I used a BlackBerry Classic that also ran BB10 until December 2017, and I still pick it up from time to time and wish I could still use it. The Classic is unique in that it has three independent input methods, all of which work super well: 1. Touch screen: the BB10 OS is actually designed for touch, with fluid and intuitive gestures. Swipe up to go home, swipe up and to the right to go to the notifications hub (reverse the gesture to just peek), swipe left to pull off a screen layer to go back, swipe down from the top to view the settings pane (standard place for settings in every app). 2. Optical trackpad and hard nav buttons, just like on old BlackBerries. You can fully control the phone without touching the screen (great for when you're wearing thick gloves during winter). Works super well for a mouse pointer in the browser. The trackpad even works reasonably well in Android apps, which weren't designed for it (presumably, it piggy-backed on the accessibility focus stuff). 3. Hardware keyboard: typing experience is great—not necessarily faster, but super precise, and no pop-up keyboard getting in the way. Every app is designed with keyboard shortcuts in mind, and the OS makes discovery super easy, so stuff like [C]omposing an email, scrolling to the [T]op of the page, or scrolling to the [N]ext page in a PDF are single click operations. Modern BlackBerries also have great keyboards, but since they run Android, they have none of the shortcuts (except app shortcuts).

NotPaidToPost 7y ago

My wife got one of the last Blackberries for work a few years back. She had never had one so wanted to try. Build quality was very poor. Overall experience was very poor. She ran back to iPhone as soon as she could. RIM died because their products were poor compared to the competition, it's as simple as that.

sonnyblarney 7y ago

I worked at RIM during the rise/collapse and would indicate the issues were mostly structural, cultural, and competitive. BlackBerry was a small company up against the #1 product of the era (iPhone) and a 'free' competitor. Both companies are basically #1 and #2 brands in the world. They have very deep experience in all things, channels, money etc.. We had no 'mapping team' really, Google had 100 people. iOS is from MacOS. BB had this ancient thing. We were just a tiny company that got clobbered, but frankly, BB was culturally more like 'motorola' than an advanced, well run entity. BB could not compete. RIM started in 1982, not in the 1990's. The 'rise' was quite meteoric when they decided to put email on your hip, and added a phone.

macspoofing 7y ago

I still don't see how in any way Qualcomm was responsible for or contributed to Blackberry's downfall. No doubt that Blackberry sent tons of licensing money to them, but that didn't seem to hold back their crazy growth rate. Neither did it seem to contribute to their downfall.