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Blackberry's Euro MD ignores iPhone questions in BBC interview
- schappim 14y agoWow, did they give him no media training!?!
- arethuza 14y agoBy the sounds of it I think he has had some really bad media training.
- damian2000 14y agoHe sounded like a politician, trying to delay answering a direct question for as long as possible.
- AlexMuir 14y agoDirect link for the UK (not sure it's accessible elsewhere): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p014f43k http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p014f43k -- My embarrassment at this humiliating performance is only mitigated by a slight pride in the BBC presenters not letting him off with it.
- EnderMB 14y agoI listened to this, and watched him on BBC Breakfast. It was as painful as the article implies, and it is clear that he had barely even prepared for his interview outside of preparing a few lines of bullshit to spout about "the Blackberry experience". He was torn to spreads by several interviewers in a fairly casual setting, and although I'm sure he's fairly competent at his job he offered no optimism ahead of their product launch. EDIT: Shreds, not spreads. Never comment on an empty stomach.
- robotmay 14y agoI realise "torn to spreads" is probably a mistake in there, but that's now my new favourite phrase. Especially in the context of lunch.
- joyinsky 14y agoWow, this is a new low. Even for BlackBerry.
- nsns 14y agoBut not for a politician...[0] [0] http://www.mediaite.com/tv/robot-politician-in-bbc-interview-british-labor-leader-gives-same-answer-to-every-question/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/robot-politician-in-bbc-interview...
- arethuza 14y agoI've never had the "uncanny valley" feeling while watching a human before!
- chris_wot 14y agoYou really, really need to start listening to the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, talk. Sorry if this sounds like a cheap political shot, as I'm normally a Labor party supporter, but she honestly is like an overprogrammed, overcoached politician.
- parenthesis 14y agoTo be fair, it's to make sure that his soundbyted message appears in the media regardless of which little snippet of the interview is used.
- pmjoyce 14y agoI've yet to see a more egregious and brazen example of a politician refusing to answer a question than Jeremy Paxman's 1997 Newsnight interview with Michael Howard. [1] Paxman asked the same question 12 times and 12 times it was dodged and avoided. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Uwlsd8RAoqI#t=251s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
- mixmax 14y agowe’re at the bridge of a new transformation where we see it from going from mobile communications, there’s mobile computing.. blah blah blah .. we’ve really driven to is delivering a new unique user experience. blah blah blah... engaging our customers, consumers, our business customers, the developers, our partners and we’ve been interacting about what the new BB will deliver and the feedback’s bneen amazing around… blah blah blah... Total corporate newspeak from one end to the other. The only thing we learn is that he's a businessman, but he's also a familyman.
- cantos 14y agoI think we also learned that he has only ever had to work at convincing existing bb users that the new version is worth upgrading to. He knows nothing about the technical features which is fine because he only ever interacts with high level people in enterprise businesses who don't care about technical features. I've started to think that bb management views the company like the IBM of the mobile phone world, an old and venerable company driven by great engineering that doesn't need to be greatly concerned with what its competitors are doing. Them having deeply internalized this kind of view of company is the only reason I can think of that their apparent arrogance and misunderstanding of their place in the world makes sense.
- kaolinite 14y agoI can completely understand him not wanting to answer the iPhone question - that's the kind of thing that would end up in court if Apple ever sued RIM. However later when he can't even mention a feature that BB10 has over Android/iOS, that's just embarrassing.
- Nux 14y agoI wonder what they've learned from Android, since this is the prevalent smartphone OS in the UK. :-D Anyway, amazing interview. :-))
- archangel_one 14y ago...Really? I mean, it's pretty prevalent right here, but I am sitting in the Google office. I see significantly more iPhones on the Tube of a morning than Android phones. Do you think Android is more prevalent outside London, or have you just had a different experience to me?
- Nux 14y agohttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/21/android-smartphones-os-uk-apple http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/21/android-sma... And I think the gap has grown even more in the last year (in Apple's disadvantage). Iphones are pretty "visible" indeed, depends where and when you travel. At work however over 90% of the people use non-apple stuff.
- beaumartinez 14y agoThe tube in the morning has a wealthier, commuting demographic that doesn't represent the rest of the UK.
- robotmay 14y agoIf only more businesses realised that the London demographic is starkly different to pretty much everywhere else. I'm in Cardiff and I see quite a few more Android phones than I do iPhones.
- andyking 14y agoI concur. The trains and trams in and out of Sheffield are very much Android territory. Not even new Android devices (Galaxy SIII, Nexus 4 etc) - they are generally devices a generation or two behind. Mind you, there is That Guy who sits watching Pointless on streaming TV on his iPad on the way home each night...
- tehwalrus 14y agothat was painful to read.
- chris_wot 14y agoWhatever you do, don't listen to it then...
- Beltiras 14y agoIf you think about it thou: answering questions like this invites litigation.
- chris_wot 14y agoRidiculous. He can talk about it in generic terms. He could say the bleeding obvious: the iPhone is very easy to use, and so they have focused on usability. Or their app store ecosystem is excellent. So they want to be awesome at that. While I don't like spin, this was oh so much the easiest of questions to have answered.
- chris_wot 14y agoHere’s the transcript. Audio can be accessed on iPlayer. Ouch.
- damian2000 14y agoMuppets like this guy don't do their cause any good at all. I don't understand why BB don't talk up their new OS (QNX). From the little I know about it it seems fairly cool ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX Its a microkernal based RTOS.
- hmexx 14y agoHere's a video of a similar performance by this guy on UK TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5l8bdaOMaA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5l8bdaOMaA
- chris_wot 14y ago"Blackberry UK head, Stephen Bates sticks to his PR script. The script doesn't help him." I love the segue back to the compere's... Q: "What went wrong?" A: "The boss wants to focus on what went right..."
- seivan 14y agoRim/Blackberry is a joke. Sounds like a business monkey at large here, selling shit he has no clue about. Would have been better if they had one of the designers or engineers onboard instead buzzwording bs and making a fool out of himself. Kudos to the BBC guys for not letting him off the hook, regardless of how awkward it might have been. Got a new fan now.
- varjag 14y agoThe takeaway: nobody wants to be that guy who sets up his employer to another billion dollar lawsuit from Apple.
- ludflu 14y agoThat's what I was thinking. Any direct answer to that question would delight the swarms of injunction-happy Apple lawyers.
- raganwald 14y ago"You know, people often ask me how to compare our new models to some of the products that people are already using. They ask me what we've learned from them, as you did. That's great." "And yes we did learn from them. Not so much about manufacturing, or how to make portable, powerful device that is the hub of your day. We have been doing this for as long as we've been a company, that's in our DNA." "BUT, what I think we've learned from those other products is the importance of getting things right for the entire user experience, not just the core four or five things you do the most. We've always had the very best messaging platform. We've always had the best security for business. We've always had the best devices for texting and emailing." "Now we are committed to that excellence in being the device that browses the web. That manages your digital wallet. That helps you navigate from where you were to where you want to be." "We've learned a lot from the way those other companies do a great job on things that our customers used to tell us were not critical. The bar has been raised, and we think we are still the very best device for messaging plus we are now leapfrogging them to be the best in all the things people are doing with their devices, not just the core things they do the most."
- hmexx 14y agoYou're hired.
- leonardzen 14y ago^That.
- meaty 14y agoThat interviewer was being an unprofessional asshat to be honest. I think the BBC are near tabloid when it comes to technology reporting these days.
- widdershins 14y agoWhat would have been more professional? To just sit back and let the guy recite his PR release from memory? A professional interviewer asks the questions that his audience want answered.
- meaty 14y agoA professional interviewer doesn't shout over the interviewee, however incompetent they are.
- chris_wot 14y agoYou're joking. Apple are wiping the floor with Blackberry. Blackberry are about to go out of business because of Apple. I think that it's a pretty reasonable question, and given the response (or lack thereof) the interviewer was totally within his rights to go after Stephen Bates. The BBC is not a place for you to read out your press release. Expect to be asked questions. Even gentle ones, like, "what have you learned from your competitors?".
- meaty 14y ago100% not joking. The questions are fine but the approach that was taken i.e. shouting over the guy is unacceptable. Watch Jeremy Paxman deal with someone. He'll let the person dig themselves a hole and politely fill it in on top of them.
- maerek 14y agoWhat is BB's real business value proposition? I'm got sincere concern for the well-being of Blackberry. I doubt that having a physical keyboard is enough of a game changer to have people switch back to a BB from an Android/iPhone device. They've stagnated for several years while their competitors have moved ahead, in terms of both OS polish and device functionality. A lackluster interview performance where not a single tangible improvement was given seems more indicative of the company as a whole than just an inept executive. Any speak about "business friendliness" and "security" is complete hogwash. Apple's and Androids MDM solutions may not be perfect, but app-level encryption is readily available on both. Data secured at rest + data secured in transit.
- ishansharma 14y agoSo, I have asked this question many times but never got an answer. Fellow HN users, please tell me: >> What is the USP of BlackBerry? I've met many people who use BB and I have no idea why. And all the answers were like this guy's answers.
- chris_wot 14y agoRIM seem to have form on this sort of thing... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9456798.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9456798.s... From one extreme to another it appears!