10 ms·

BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

162 points by mrcharles 13y ago

spodek 13y ago
The timeless story of Ozymandias -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias -- (if you don't know the 1818 sonnet by Shelley, read it before downvoting. It's relevant and timeless) I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away". EDIT: Thanks for the link to the excellent Breaking Bad video. For what it's worth, I haven't seen an episode since season 3 so didn't realize the coincidence. My pop culture connection would have been to Watchmen.
- jmduke 13y ago
  There's something particularly ironic about calling Ozymandias timeless.
  - derefr 13y ago
    It's a bit of a "the king is dead; long live the King!" thing. There will always be an Ozymandias.
  - mjburgess 13y ago
    The poem is itself ironic... it's about Ramses III who rule c. 1000 BC and yet was famous enough that poetry would be inspired by him 3000 years later.
    - mturmon 13y ago
      I agree. When I was younger, I only got the obvious message about the transience of material accomplishment. The poem is more multifaceted than that. One starting place is to think about the layers of interpretation (Ramses -> sculptor -> traveler -> narrator). Everyone concerned is still talking, in different ways, about the memory of Ramses. As long as we're on the topic, here's one of my favorite expressions of parallels between us and people in the past: https://plus.google.com/+Cornell/posts/MSaUEUpVB8q https://plus.google.com/+Cornell/posts/MSaUEUpVB8q This bench sits behind the library at Cornell University.
    - bloaf 13y ago
      Lacking belief in an afterlife, many early civilizations instead strove to achieve immortality in "kleos": the fame that does not decay.
- themckman 13y ago
  Certainly relevant, but, Breaking Bad fan?
  - mburns 13y ago
    No, the Breaking Bad writers are fans of Ozymandius.
  - hvs 13y ago
    I first thought of "Watchmen" by Alan Moore.
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      Or "Civilization IV", which had this narrated by Leonard Nimoy :)
      - 205guy 13y ago
        Am I the only one around here... Who was not educated by pop culture references, But actually remembers reading this in school? Yeah, yeah, I get it, it's fun when we find subtle references to pop culture in the greater world around us. But it just seems wrong when the pop reference replace the actual culture (or maybe the irony is so subtle as to seem non-ironic, ironically--or something). Somebody should update the wikipedia page with a "References in Pop Culture" section.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        Eh, I suspect there were people who thought the same as you when Shakespeare packaged up Greek mythology and fart jokes for the unwashed masses.
        205guy 13y ago
        Right, but since then, we've attempted to give everyone a liberal arts education. But many are resistant to that and prefer the teat of the entertainment industry. Nothing wrong with hearing about something on TV and googling it (Wikipedia has revolutionized instant knowledge in this way). It's the people who don't dig deeper and don't realize the prior reference and deeper meaning to begin with. And so it seems like they're missing the subtle reference to the real world in the TV show.
- L_Rahman 13y ago
  Bryan Cranston of this to promote the second half of the final season of Breaking Bad. It's set to some beautiful shots of the New Mexico desert. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dpghfRBHE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dpghfRBHE
  - jzwinck 13y ago
    "Not available in your country." This is absurd, considering what I imagine the content to be.
    - akandiah 13y ago
      Here's another version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-PXfzsj4o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-PXfzsj4o
- dev_jim 13y ago
  Jeez man, Breaking Bad was just last week. Show a little originality in your postings.
  - graeme 13y ago
    It's a poem that had great meaning before Breaking Bad, and a poem that will retain it's meaning long after Breaking Bad is forgotten. I never saw that show, and the poem seemed quite relevant to me.
- absherwin 13y ago
  Kipling's The Palace is also fitting perhaps even more so for those building today's successful platforms: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_palace.htm http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_palace.htm. WHEN I was a King and a Mason - a Master proven and skilled I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build. I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently under the silt I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built. There was no worth in the fashion - there was no wit in the plan - Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran - Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I too have known. Swift to my use in the trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew, I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew. Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it slacked it, and spread; Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead. Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart, I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder’s heart. As he had written and pleaded, so did I understand The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned. When I was a King and a Mason, in the open noon of my pride, They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside. They said - "The end is forbidden." They said - "Thy use is fulfilled. "Thy Palace shall stand as that other’s - the spoil of a King who shall build." I called my men from my trenches, my quarries my wharves and my sheers. All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years. Only I cut on the timber - only I carved on the stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."
iamshs 13y ago
NO. Teary eyed. :( 3.7 million phone sales are nothing. Only if they had copied iOS the Samsung way in time.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Or used Samsung hardware in their device! ;)
- kunai 13y ago
  Why? The problem isn't with the phones. The Z10 and Q10 are fantastic and BB10 is probably the best business-centric OS ever written. The problem is that the applications are just not there, and that people associate BlackBerry with reboots, battery pulls, and outdated, clunky software, even though that's not the case. It's an image problem, not a phone problem. They can't market like Apple used to. If they could, they would get more sales, but their marketing is just pitiful.
  - dkrich 13y ago
    I'm sure that's true but I also think there was an inflection point where people who had Blackberry's didn't have a better option right as Apple and Samsung were coming out with much more complete phones (great hardware, software, and robust app stores). A lot of these people switched over to Apple/Android and never went back. Now it is just a question of Apple or Android and Blackberry doesn't even enter the picture. I had a Blackberry Tour that I got in 2009 and had until 2011. By the time the contract was up a key was missing and the software was archaic compared to what was on the market. From that time forward I had no interest in ever going back. I think the same thing could be largely said about Dell. They didn't care about quality until competitors came along and ate their lunch. Now they are trying to reinvent themselves and claim back lost market share which is just a very, very difficult thing to do.
  - Liuser 13y ago
    To add on, it does not help that BlackBerry makes the application submission process difficult. I submit and update our 30+ mobile applications on Apple, Google Play, Amazon and BlackBerry. No experience with Windows yet. However, compared to those listed stores that I have experience with, BlackBerry is my least favorite. I use the same binary build that I submit with ease for Google and Amazon, but BlackBerry tends to deny our application every once in awhile. Just figuring out how to navigate the application web portal to figure out why it was denied is a challenge. Why is it so hard to wrap the "Denied" text with a direct link to the reason as to why it was denied? Instead I need to crawl the page to find the reason. Another trouble that comes to mind more recently is that they added some sort of additional min-os requirement for a config/manifest file with a cryptic error message that needed resolving before the binary was allowed to be submitted. I would have thought it would be far easier to get apps through BlackBerry since they want more apps for their devices. Instead, I personally find getting apps for BB discouraging. Windows in the same space even approached and offered to pay us to develop an app for their store.
mrcharles 13y ago
Was digging up some numbers. In 2010, BlackBerry still sold more phones than Apple. How the mighty have fallen.
- gummify 13y ago
  What were the real problems then that led to their fall? Lack of technology innovation? badly run company and operations? lost touch with the consumer? All of the above?
  - scrabble 13y ago
    There were a few key parts to this (and lots more that I'm missing). 1] OS felt dated. Failure to come closer to what customers wanted on a timely basis. 2] Poor app developer experience. 3] A lot of different hardware specs against which to develop apps. 4] Not enough apps. Missing key apps. 5] Slow to innovate after settling on major patent case. The company became very lawyer focused which slowed innovation to a crawl. I'm sure I'm missing tons of stuff and this would be a great case study, but as a former employee this is coming from my perspective.
    - canistr 13y ago
      I would add culture to that whereby executive leadership and downward did not admit to problems and felt the platform was infallible. As a graduate of Waterloo, I can attest that between 2008-2011 people in the KW area were steadfast in denying the future of mobile and the underlying problems at RIM/BlackBerry.
      - jusben1369 13y ago
        I would agree with you. In a former life I had interactions with BB in a sales capacity. I sold into or had customers at many of the Top 50 "tech" companies. BB/Rim had one of the strangest, most insular cultures I came across. Maybe early on they felt really patronized by US/SV VC's/companies etc and so were anti US. Either way it was quite odd. I really wondered how that would end up working out for them.
maxsilver 13y ago
It's unfortunate, as someone who just purchased a Q10 (switched from Android), I think they've finally got their act together and released something excellent. The Q10's battery life is great, the hardware keyboard is solid and travels well. The Paratek antenna gets the best reception and data connection of any device I've ever used. The BB10 software isn't great, but it's decent. (It's certainly far better than where WebOS / iOS / Android was when they launched. Even today, BB10.2 is significantly better / more powerful than Windows Phone 8, even if the UI is less well defined). Their story, to me, seems almost down to timing. They're executing pretty well right now, it's just two to three years too late. It will be sad to watch all that hardware die. In a year or two, there probably won't be any devices available that have a large battery, solid hardware keyboard, and decent cellular data reception.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- derefr 13y ago
  Seems to me the best thing that could happen to them would be a bankruptcy followed by either a sell-off, or a split-off, of their design division (and all associated hardware contracts.) Then you'd have the equivalent of a fresh start-up making these phones, with no debts. They'd probably do pretty well.
  - NTDF9 13y ago
    But will they have enough engineers on board to make a phone? The hardware game is quite expensive.
  - GrinningFool 13y ago
    THey're already debt-free, I'm not sure that bankruptcy can help?
- rimantas 13y ago
  Alas, Q10 does not compete with iOS from 6 years ago.
eli 13y ago
I was really hoping they could turn it around -- by all accounts the new phones are pretty nice and the mobile OS market could use some more serious competitors. But they have virtually no apps and no clear path to getting apps. Combine that with BYOD policies that let employees bring their own phones instead of having one issued and their whole sales model goes out the window.
- contextual 13y ago
  They don't have some big name apps like Audible yet (there are substitutes) but the app selection is decent. There are even some gems for BlackBerry you won't find anywhere else.
Touche 13y ago
I sympathize strongly with the people who lost their job. I don't, however, sympathize with the company that made their decision to go it alone despite overwhelming evidence that there isn't room for another platform. iOS, Android, the Web. That's it. That's all there's going to be for the foreseeable future in mobile. Even Microsoft is failing at this. How much evidence does a company need to see that their strategy was doomed? It's classic innovators dilemma. BlackBerry could think of nothing but protecting their existing business, even with failure staring them in the face. They should have been planning more for the next phase of the company (whether that be selling enterprise servers or whatever else) and made a small, cheap, play at restoring their phone business (probably by forking Android).
- bsullivan01 13y ago
  >>Even Microsoft is failing at this. How much evidence does a company need to see that their strategy was doomed? The BB, Nokia, HTC etc problem is one of cash /runaway. Nokia was almost broke and how many $950M loss quarters can BB take? Not that many. Microsoft can keep bankrolling Windows Phones for a decade waiting for iPhone and Android to make mistakes and no one will even question them. Look at what they've done for xBox and Bing.
  - Touche 13y ago
    Aren't they losing money on Bing, and are basically break even on Xbox? I predict Microsoft will eventually give up on Windows Phone and probably the consumer market in general. The momentum is overwhelmingly against them, but of course they'll go down with the ship almost all the way. What they should probably do is maintain an Android fork.
    - JTon 13y ago
      As long as WP adoption is growing (which is it) why give up?
    - dham 13y ago
      I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but they have a reputation of throwing money at something for a long period of time and it succeeding.
methodin 13y ago
If any new phone wants a decent market share they have to start with the developers - they are the ones who will carry it along until enough 2 year contracts expire to grow the user base. Blackberry simply failed on this front so it's no wonder they are struggling. They followed Microsoft's path of screwing developers which clearly was a bad move. There is always room for new devices, though. If FF or Ubuntu develop the repertoire with the developers first they have a fighting chance. There are pretty much no companies left that can sell just on their history and existing fan-base alone.
- alex_c 13y ago
  >They followed Microsoft's path of screwing developers which clearly was a bad move. Can you elaborate? From what I've seen RIM made a pretty significant effort to court developers to its platform - the users and revenue just weren't there, so it was not that tempting for developers no matter what RIM said or did.
  - maxsilver 13y ago
    I think the parent's mistaken BB7 with BB10. With the modern BlackBerry software, they made a hugely significant effort, way more than Microsoft did. They included an entire Android 4.x runtime in their operating system, just so developers could take their existing Android apps and deploy them to BB10 with roughly 'one-click' worth of effort. Short of re-writing every app on the face of the planet, I'm not sure how BlackBerry could have made it easier for developers to port or submit BB10 apps.
verelo 13y ago
A long time ago i said RIM is the new Nortel. I think I can continue to stand by that statement.
- Finster 13y ago
  Nortel? Or Novell? I guess both apply, but Novell seems to fit much better.
  - ywgdana 13y ago
    He likely means Nortel, especially in the sense of it being the Canadian tech darling that fritters away its business into irrelevancy.
martythemaniak 13y ago
I've been thinking about RIM lately and I think they basically had chances to turn themselves around, but took neither. The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google, Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had it come out in 2011. With decent hardware, a solid OS, their own style and riding on BBM (big at that time), they might have staked a sustainable 10-15% chunk of the market. The second chance was '10/'11, around the time of Nokia's Burning Platform Memo. This is when RIM started on BB10, but as we see now, it was already too late. Had they bet heavily on Android and on their strengths (security, gov & enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today. I hope the Waterloo area survives this well.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  These are always more easily seen looking from the future into the past, than they are in the past looking to the future. Few companies, with the market share RIM had, see threats as 'near term'. Fewer still have a deep appreciation for the entirety of the technology stack and the time it takes to move things. This is especially true of young executives but can happen to anyone. RIM's technology stack matured over many years, from idea to business juggernaut. What that tells you is that moving the stack is also going to take years, so if you're experienced you start looking 5 - 6 years out not 1 - 2 years out. When the iPhone hit, and Google was close behind, that was a huge signal. But Ballmer and Microsoft dismissing it, was a huge counter-signal. If you're an enterprise IT company, and the biggest company in Enterprise IT in the market place is dismissing the iPhone as a 'fad', you might be inclined to believe them rather than your own people who are saying "this is a threat". At some point you get behind the power curve. In airplanes once you are behind the curve there is literally nothing you can do which will prevent you from eventually crashing. The same it true in companies. RIM apparently decided early on that Microsoft was a more credible indicator of the future than Apple/Google for their marketplace. And they have paid the ultimate price for that.
  - Touche 13y ago
    nit, but Ballmer did not dismiss the iPhone, he dismissed the $500 on contract iPhone. And he even said "it may sell very well". Here's the actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U I know it's become fun to pretend like Ballmer dismissed the iPhone but I have a hard time watching that video and seeing anything like that.
mkr-hn 13y ago
Relevant Google Trends chart: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+windows+phone%2C+ios%2C+blackberry#q=google%20android%2C%20windows%20phone%2C%20ios%2C%20blackberry&cmpt=q https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+wi... Blackberry's slide starts around October 2011. News search is a little more flat, but that probably reflects the fact that tech journalists like to compare the rise of one thing to the fall of another. Google search reflects what people are looking for in general, so it covers people looking up information on the phone and OS, not just news. Oddly, Blackberry is still in the lead on image and shopping search. It was tied with iOS on youtube until recently.
- corresation 13y ago
  Why "Google Android" instead of just "Android" (or alternately you could, I suppose, go with "Apple iOS"), because the latter much more closely mirrors what has happened in the market. Unless personal assistant robots have taken off corresponding with Android, I don't think it's being polluted much.
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    I tried to keep it to the most general term that still associated it with a company. It seems to be smart enough to pick up on the relation between android and the other terms, but the two graphs are still wildly different. I would expect them to be similar. I'm not sure which way to go with it. Fortunately, you're free to tinker with the inputs. This is probably a more interesting graph: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=droid%2C%20lumia%2C%20iphone&cmpt=q#q=droid%2C%20lumia%2C%20iphone&cmpt=q https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=droid%2C%20lumia%2C%...
    - bqe 13y ago
      I think this is the most interesting (and telling) one: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=android%2C+iphone%2C+windows+phone%2C+blackberry https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=android%2C+iphone%2C...
  - mitchty 13y ago
leefrank 13y ago
Ethan. I agree that Linda`s stori is really great, on monday I bought a new GMC from having made $6642 this last five weeks and-just over, $10 thousand this past-munth. it's certainly the most-rewarding I have ever done. I actually started 10-months ago and immediately began to earn more than $80.. per-hour. check it out http://goo.gl/HRSfiS http://goo.gl/HRSfiS
leefrank 13y ago
like Shannon answered I am impressed that some people able to make $9918 in four weeks on the computer. try this out big57.CoM
pearjuice 13y ago
It will all be over, soon.
FrankenPC 13y ago
Queue "bye bye Blackberry". They milked their corporate entrenched position for an admirable duration of time.
bsaul 13y ago
started developping apps for mobile in 2009. at that time, i aimed for ios development and blackberry. it took me 2 months to get my first app on ios, and i thought "ok, now let's start learning about blackberry". So, i downloaded their doc. iirc, they had three ways to develop apps. one was using web technology, and you couldn't do much. then they had two different sets of java apis : an old, discontinued one, with which you seemed to be able to have things work, and a new one, soon to be released, and undocumented. so i installed their sdk, on my mac, and tried to run a "hello world". but their sdk required windows, because the simulator didn't exist on mac. i had just bought and dual-boot installed a windows 7. but the sdk was just for xp, so i had to run an XP vm inside my windows. then i launched eclipse, to launch the simulator, to launch the Java program that was supposed to run my hello world. i never was patient enough for that hello world to show. then i said " well...let's get back to that once a customer ask for a blackberry development". and guess what, that customer never came.
- epoxyhockey 13y ago
  so i installed their sdk In 2010, I didn't even get this far.
- wsc981 13y ago
  Your experience reminds me of an amusing open letter by a developer (original blog is down, I found a copy) to Developer Relations of RIM: https://www.memonic.com/user/ChrisPolus/folder/4738150b-bd22-4421-a2de-9053de6123be/id/1qNYw https://www.memonic.com/user/ChrisPolus/folder/4738150b-bd22...
- JesseObrien 13y ago
  I had almost this exact same scenario happen to me. As a developer, I was excited to see what new fun things at the time (2009) were coming out of RIM. To my dismay, like yours, I couldn't even get a hello world to run after much tinkering and configuring. After I learned that they didn't even use the SDK they released into the wild in their own development, I knew it was a lost company. Dogfood and all that.
programminggeek 13y ago
Inventory kills hardware companies.
Raphmedia 13y ago
Good riddance. I was a fan, until I actually had to contact their customer support. Bought an android right after.
codeoclock 13y ago
So is this it then? They're finally gone?
eliben 13y ago
It's amazing what a killer the smartphone market turned out to be. Nokia. RIM. Microsoft are in bad trouble. Intel. who else?
- colmvp 13y ago
  Is Intel really in any trouble? They're got a huge dominance on laptop/desktop processors, no?
  - eliben 13y ago
    Desktops are a huge, but declining business. In laptops they already have serious competition in Samsung's ARM-based Chromebooks. Besides, laptops also don't grow nearly as fast as smartphones and tablets. In markets, it's the growth that matters most, not the current revenue.
    - seabrookmx 13y ago
      Android runs on x86, and Bay Trail could put Intel right back in the game if they get vendors on board: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-intel-atom-z3770-tested/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-in...
      - eliben 13y ago
        Intel's Atom line has been announced circa the time of the original iPhone. Should I say more?
    - tsotha 13y ago
      Intel is fine. They have such a huge manufacturing and capital advantage they can afford to lose time after time, whereas the likes of AMD and ARM can only afford to lose once. Intel will own the mobile space in a decade or so.
      - daliusd 13y ago
tareqak 13y ago
Press results from BB: http://press.blackberry.com/financial/2013/blackberry-announces-preliminary-second-quarter-fiscal-2014-resu.html http://press.blackberry.com/financial/2013/blackberry-announ...
moca 13y ago
I have built software for large BlackBerry customers and met with RIMM people before. 3 years ago, I had suggested they should create an enterprise-oriented Android phones, such like Amazon created media-oriented tablets. 3 years ago, RIMM was still the #1 in enterprise smartphone market, and they had great chance to succeed in that area. However, most companies are afraid to compete on fair battle background (Android). So instead of one, RIMM chose to fight 4 battles at the same time, hardware, software, ecosystem, marketing, and it lost on all of them. Now it is too late to change the fate. RIMM management was too afraid to change (really really afraid). It is said when I met RIMM people, and saw they couldn't do anything to save the sinking ship.
bio4m 13y ago
Speaking as an enterprise customer on long upgrade cycles, RIM/Blackberry badly judged the situation vis a vis their enterprise customer base. The new Z10 was not compatible with their large install base of Blackberry Enterprise Server. Anyone still running BES at the time the Z10 was introduced was likely to be a shop interested in security and control of the mobile platform their end users were using. Which is why businesses like my employer and many others kept buying BB OS7 devices (did you notice they didnt break numbers out and actually mentioned BBOS7 as a significant portion during their investor call ?) TL;DR: They thought all their enterprise customers would upgrade fast, they guessed wrong.
tossaway1900 13y ago
We're closing in on the launch of cross-platform BBM, and much of the work for that wasn't even done internally. They contracted that stuff out. Now they're cutting actual BB people. A lot of it is dead weight, and the usual bloated middle management, but I can't wait to see who else gets the axe here. Make no mistake, the goal is to sell the company at this point. That is why BBM is suddenly the focus. They know that they aren't going to stay afloat with phone sales. They'll cut to the bone, and beef up one of their main commodities (BBM) until the sale happens.
- HorizonXP 13y ago
  This is incorrect. It was mostly done in-house, with some outside help.
  - tossaway1900 13y ago
    Mostly? This may depend on perspective. The infrastructure behind the app is definitely in-house, but the UI isn't at all.
kineticfocus 13y ago
The juxtaposition of these two headlines on Ars struck me with some awe: "Grand Theft Auto V rakes in over $1 billion in three days", "Blackberry warns of near-$1 billion loss this quarter". Especially since they're more tangible 'billions' than the Instagram deal.
contextual 13y ago
It just occurred to me that BlackBerry is playing a brilliant strategy. This billion dollar writedown lowers the stocks so it can be taken private. Meanwhile, BlackBerry announces the flagship Z30 to get users excited. Z10 hasn't been out that long, and already they're writing off stock? And Z10 is such an awesome phone, anyone who actually uses one loves it. It could only be for one reason, to take the company private asap. I expect announcement of a sale soon.
flatfilefan 13y ago
From what I have gathered they have not managed the growth hiring people below the original level. A company with 12000 employes should be unmanageable because of bureaucracy anyway. After some point new people only slow you down. Hope the old core is still there and something will finally come out of this.
FkZ 13y ago
Now where will I have to go for a keyboard and an OS not by Google?

162 points by mrcharles 13y ago

The timeless story of Ozymandias -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias -- (if you don't know the 1818 sonnet by Shelley, read it before downvoting. It's relevant and timeless) I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away". EDIT: Thanks for the link to the excellent Breaking Bad video. For what it's worth, I haven't seen an episode since season 3 so didn't realize the coincidence. My pop culture connection would have been to Watchmen.

jmduke 13y ago
There's something particularly ironic about calling Ozymandias timeless.
- derefr 13y ago
  It's a bit of a "the king is dead; long live the King!" thing. There will always be an Ozymandias.
- mjburgess 13y ago
  The poem is itself ironic... it's about Ramses III who rule c. 1000 BC and yet was famous enough that poetry would be inspired by him 3000 years later.
  - mturmon 13y ago
    I agree. When I was younger, I only got the obvious message about the transience of material accomplishment. The poem is more multifaceted than that. One starting place is to think about the layers of interpretation (Ramses -> sculptor -> traveler -> narrator). Everyone concerned is still talking, in different ways, about the memory of Ramses. As long as we're on the topic, here's one of my favorite expressions of parallels between us and people in the past: https://plus.google.com/+Cornell/posts/MSaUEUpVB8q https://plus.google.com/+Cornell/posts/MSaUEUpVB8q This bench sits behind the library at Cornell University.
  - bloaf 13y ago
    Lacking belief in an afterlife, many early civilizations instead strove to achieve immortality in "kleos": the fame that does not decay.
themckman 13y ago
Certainly relevant, but, Breaking Bad fan?
- mburns 13y ago
  No, the Breaking Bad writers are fans of Ozymandius.
- hvs 13y ago
  I first thought of "Watchmen" by Alan Moore.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    Or "Civilization IV", which had this narrated by Leonard Nimoy :)
    - 205guy 13y ago
      Am I the only one around here... Who was not educated by pop culture references, But actually remembers reading this in school? Yeah, yeah, I get it, it's fun when we find subtle references to pop culture in the greater world around us. But it just seems wrong when the pop reference replace the actual culture (or maybe the irony is so subtle as to seem non-ironic, ironically--or something). Somebody should update the wikipedia page with a "References in Pop Culture" section.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Eh, I suspect there were people who thought the same as you when Shakespeare packaged up Greek mythology and fart jokes for the unwashed masses.
        205guy 13y ago
        Right, but since then, we've attempted to give everyone a liberal arts education. But many are resistant to that and prefer the teat of the entertainment industry. Nothing wrong with hearing about something on TV and googling it (Wikipedia has revolutionized instant knowledge in this way). It's the people who don't dig deeper and don't realize the prior reference and deeper meaning to begin with. And so it seems like they're missing the subtle reference to the real world in the TV show.
L_Rahman 13y ago
Bryan Cranston of this to promote the second half of the final season of Breaking Bad. It's set to some beautiful shots of the New Mexico desert. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dpghfRBHE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dpghfRBHE
- jzwinck 13y ago
  "Not available in your country." This is absurd, considering what I imagine the content to be.
  - akandiah 13y ago
    Here's another version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-PXfzsj4o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-PXfzsj4o
dev_jim 13y ago
Jeez man, Breaking Bad was just last week. Show a little originality in your postings.
- graeme 13y ago
  It's a poem that had great meaning before Breaking Bad, and a poem that will retain it's meaning long after Breaking Bad is forgotten. I never saw that show, and the poem seemed quite relevant to me.
absherwin 13y ago
Kipling's The Palace is also fitting perhaps even more so for those building today's successful platforms: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_palace.htm http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_palace.htm. WHEN I was a King and a Mason - a Master proven and skilled I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build. I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently under the silt I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built. There was no worth in the fashion - there was no wit in the plan - Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran - Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I too have known. Swift to my use in the trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew, I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew. Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it slacked it, and spread; Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead. Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart, I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder’s heart. As he had written and pleaded, so did I understand The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned. When I was a King and a Mason, in the open noon of my pride, They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside. They said - "The end is forbidden." They said - "Thy use is fulfilled. "Thy Palace shall stand as that other’s - the spoil of a King who shall build." I called my men from my trenches, my quarries my wharves and my sheers. All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years. Only I cut on the timber - only I carved on the stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."

iamshs 13y ago

NO. Teary eyed. :( 3.7 million phone sales are nothing. Only if they had copied iOS the Samsung way in time.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Or used Samsung hardware in their device! ;)
kunai 13y ago
Why? The problem isn't with the phones. The Z10 and Q10 are fantastic and BB10 is probably the best business-centric OS ever written. The problem is that the applications are just not there, and that people associate BlackBerry with reboots, battery pulls, and outdated, clunky software, even though that's not the case. It's an image problem, not a phone problem. They can't market like Apple used to. If they could, they would get more sales, but their marketing is just pitiful.
- dkrich 13y ago
  I'm sure that's true but I also think there was an inflection point where people who had Blackberry's didn't have a better option right as Apple and Samsung were coming out with much more complete phones (great hardware, software, and robust app stores). A lot of these people switched over to Apple/Android and never went back. Now it is just a question of Apple or Android and Blackberry doesn't even enter the picture. I had a Blackberry Tour that I got in 2009 and had until 2011. By the time the contract was up a key was missing and the software was archaic compared to what was on the market. From that time forward I had no interest in ever going back. I think the same thing could be largely said about Dell. They didn't care about quality until competitors came along and ate their lunch. Now they are trying to reinvent themselves and claim back lost market share which is just a very, very difficult thing to do.
- Liuser 13y ago
  To add on, it does not help that BlackBerry makes the application submission process difficult. I submit and update our 30+ mobile applications on Apple, Google Play, Amazon and BlackBerry. No experience with Windows yet. However, compared to those listed stores that I have experience with, BlackBerry is my least favorite. I use the same binary build that I submit with ease for Google and Amazon, but BlackBerry tends to deny our application every once in awhile. Just figuring out how to navigate the application web portal to figure out why it was denied is a challenge. Why is it so hard to wrap the "Denied" text with a direct link to the reason as to why it was denied? Instead I need to crawl the page to find the reason. Another trouble that comes to mind more recently is that they added some sort of additional min-os requirement for a config/manifest file with a cryptic error message that needed resolving before the binary was allowed to be submitted. I would have thought it would be far easier to get apps through BlackBerry since they want more apps for their devices. Instead, I personally find getting apps for BB discouraging. Windows in the same space even approached and offered to pay us to develop an app for their store.

mrcharles 13y ago

Was digging up some numbers. In 2010, BlackBerry still sold more phones than Apple. How the mighty have fallen.

gummify 13y ago
What were the real problems then that led to their fall? Lack of technology innovation? badly run company and operations? lost touch with the consumer? All of the above?
- scrabble 13y ago
  There were a few key parts to this (and lots more that I'm missing). 1] OS felt dated. Failure to come closer to what customers wanted on a timely basis. 2] Poor app developer experience. 3] A lot of different hardware specs against which to develop apps. 4] Not enough apps. Missing key apps. 5] Slow to innovate after settling on major patent case. The company became very lawyer focused which slowed innovation to a crawl. I'm sure I'm missing tons of stuff and this would be a great case study, but as a former employee this is coming from my perspective.
  - canistr 13y ago
    I would add culture to that whereby executive leadership and downward did not admit to problems and felt the platform was infallible. As a graduate of Waterloo, I can attest that between 2008-2011 people in the KW area were steadfast in denying the future of mobile and the underlying problems at RIM/BlackBerry.
    - jusben1369 13y ago
      I would agree with you. In a former life I had interactions with BB in a sales capacity. I sold into or had customers at many of the Top 50 "tech" companies. BB/Rim had one of the strangest, most insular cultures I came across. Maybe early on they felt really patronized by US/SV VC's/companies etc and so were anti US. Either way it was quite odd. I really wondered how that would end up working out for them.

maxsilver 13y ago

It's unfortunate, as someone who just purchased a Q10 (switched from Android), I think they've finally got their act together and released something excellent. The Q10's battery life is great, the hardware keyboard is solid and travels well. The Paratek antenna gets the best reception and data connection of any device I've ever used. The BB10 software isn't great, but it's decent. (It's certainly far better than where WebOS / iOS / Android was when they launched. Even today, BB10.2 is significantly better / more powerful than Windows Phone 8, even if the UI is less well defined). Their story, to me, seems almost down to timing. They're executing pretty well right now, it's just two to three years too late. It will be sad to watch all that hardware die. In a year or two, there probably won't be any devices available that have a large battery, solid hardware keyboard, and decent cellular data reception.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
derefr 13y ago
Seems to me the best thing that could happen to them would be a bankruptcy followed by either a sell-off, or a split-off, of their design division (and all associated hardware contracts.) Then you'd have the equivalent of a fresh start-up making these phones, with no debts. They'd probably do pretty well.
- NTDF9 13y ago
  But will they have enough engineers on board to make a phone? The hardware game is quite expensive.
- GrinningFool 13y ago
  THey're already debt-free, I'm not sure that bankruptcy can help?
rimantas 13y ago
Alas, Q10 does not compete with iOS from 6 years ago.

eli 13y ago

I was really hoping they could turn it around -- by all accounts the new phones are pretty nice and the mobile OS market could use some more serious competitors. But they have virtually no apps and no clear path to getting apps. Combine that with BYOD policies that let employees bring their own phones instead of having one issued and their whole sales model goes out the window.

contextual 13y ago
They don't have some big name apps like Audible yet (there are substitutes) but the app selection is decent. There are even some gems for BlackBerry you won't find anywhere else.

Touche 13y ago

I sympathize strongly with the people who lost their job. I don't, however, sympathize with the company that made their decision to go it alone despite overwhelming evidence that there isn't room for another platform. iOS, Android, the Web. That's it. That's all there's going to be for the foreseeable future in mobile. Even Microsoft is failing at this. How much evidence does a company need to see that their strategy was doomed? It's classic innovators dilemma. BlackBerry could think of nothing but protecting their existing business, even with failure staring them in the face. They should have been planning more for the next phase of the company (whether that be selling enterprise servers or whatever else) and made a small, cheap, play at restoring their phone business (probably by forking Android).

bsullivan01 13y ago
>>Even Microsoft is failing at this. How much evidence does a company need to see that their strategy was doomed? The BB, Nokia, HTC etc problem is one of cash /runaway. Nokia was almost broke and how many $950M loss quarters can BB take? Not that many. Microsoft can keep bankrolling Windows Phones for a decade waiting for iPhone and Android to make mistakes and no one will even question them. Look at what they've done for xBox and Bing.
- Touche 13y ago
  Aren't they losing money on Bing, and are basically break even on Xbox? I predict Microsoft will eventually give up on Windows Phone and probably the consumer market in general. The momentum is overwhelmingly against them, but of course they'll go down with the ship almost all the way. What they should probably do is maintain an Android fork.
  - JTon 13y ago
    As long as WP adoption is growing (which is it) why give up?
  - dham 13y ago
    I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but they have a reputation of throwing money at something for a long period of time and it succeeding.

methodin 13y ago

If any new phone wants a decent market share they have to start with the developers - they are the ones who will carry it along until enough 2 year contracts expire to grow the user base. Blackberry simply failed on this front so it's no wonder they are struggling. They followed Microsoft's path of screwing developers which clearly was a bad move. There is always room for new devices, though. If FF or Ubuntu develop the repertoire with the developers first they have a fighting chance. There are pretty much no companies left that can sell just on their history and existing fan-base alone.

alex_c 13y ago
>They followed Microsoft's path of screwing developers which clearly was a bad move. Can you elaborate? From what I've seen RIM made a pretty significant effort to court developers to its platform - the users and revenue just weren't there, so it was not that tempting for developers no matter what RIM said or did.
- maxsilver 13y ago
  I think the parent's mistaken BB7 with BB10. With the modern BlackBerry software, they made a hugely significant effort, way more than Microsoft did. They included an entire Android 4.x runtime in their operating system, just so developers could take their existing Android apps and deploy them to BB10 with roughly 'one-click' worth of effort. Short of re-writing every app on the face of the planet, I'm not sure how BlackBerry could have made it easier for developers to port or submit BB10 apps.

verelo 13y ago

A long time ago i said RIM is the new Nortel. I think I can continue to stand by that statement.

Finster 13y ago
Nortel? Or Novell? I guess both apply, but Novell seems to fit much better.
- ywgdana 13y ago
  He likely means Nortel, especially in the sense of it being the Canadian tech darling that fritters away its business into irrelevancy.

martythemaniak 13y ago

I've been thinking about RIM lately and I think they basically had chances to turn themselves around, but took neither. The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google, Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had it come out in 2011. With decent hardware, a solid OS, their own style and riding on BBM (big at that time), they might have staked a sustainable 10-15% chunk of the market. The second chance was '10/'11, around the time of Nokia's Burning Platform Memo. This is when RIM started on BB10, but as we see now, it was already too late. Had they bet heavily on Android and on their strengths (security, gov & enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today. I hope the Waterloo area survives this well.

ChuckMcM 13y ago
These are always more easily seen looking from the future into the past, than they are in the past looking to the future. Few companies, with the market share RIM had, see threats as 'near term'. Fewer still have a deep appreciation for the entirety of the technology stack and the time it takes to move things. This is especially true of young executives but can happen to anyone. RIM's technology stack matured over many years, from idea to business juggernaut. What that tells you is that moving the stack is also going to take years, so if you're experienced you start looking 5 - 6 years out not 1 - 2 years out. When the iPhone hit, and Google was close behind, that was a huge signal. But Ballmer and Microsoft dismissing it, was a huge counter-signal. If you're an enterprise IT company, and the biggest company in Enterprise IT in the market place is dismissing the iPhone as a 'fad', you might be inclined to believe them rather than your own people who are saying "this is a threat". At some point you get behind the power curve. In airplanes once you are behind the curve there is literally nothing you can do which will prevent you from eventually crashing. The same it true in companies. RIM apparently decided early on that Microsoft was a more credible indicator of the future than Apple/Google for their marketplace. And they have paid the ultimate price for that.
- Touche 13y ago
  nit, but Ballmer did not dismiss the iPhone, he dismissed the $500 on contract iPhone. And he even said "it may sell very well". Here's the actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U I know it's become fun to pretend like Ballmer dismissed the iPhone but I have a hard time watching that video and seeing anything like that.

mkr-hn 13y ago

Relevant Google Trends chart: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+windows+phone%2C+ios%2C+blackberry#q=google%20android%2C%20windows%20phone%2C%20ios%2C%20blackberry&cmpt=q https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+wi... Blackberry's slide starts around October 2011. News search is a little more flat, but that probably reflects the fact that tech journalists like to compare the rise of one thing to the fall of another. Google search reflects what people are looking for in general, so it covers people looking up information on the phone and OS, not just news. Oddly, Blackberry is still in the lead on image and shopping search. It was tied with iOS on youtube until recently.

corresation 13y ago
Why "Google Android" instead of just "Android" (or alternately you could, I suppose, go with "Apple iOS"), because the latter much more closely mirrors what has happened in the market. Unless personal assistant robots have taken off corresponding with Android, I don't think it's being polluted much.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  I tried to keep it to the most general term that still associated it with a company. It seems to be smart enough to pick up on the relation between android and the other terms, but the two graphs are still wildly different. I would expect them to be similar. I'm not sure which way to go with it. Fortunately, you're free to tinker with the inputs. This is probably a more interesting graph: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=droid%2C%20lumia%2C%20iphone&cmpt=q#q=droid%2C%20lumia%2C%20iphone&cmpt=q https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=droid%2C%20lumia%2C%...
  - bqe 13y ago
    I think this is the most interesting (and telling) one: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=android%2C+iphone%2C+windows+phone%2C+blackberry https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=android%2C+iphone%2C...
- mitchty 13y ago

leefrank 13y ago

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leefrank 13y ago

like Shannon answered I am impressed that some people able to make $9918 in four weeks on the computer. try this out big57.CoM

pearjuice 13y ago

It will all be over, soon.

FrankenPC 13y ago

Queue "bye bye Blackberry". They milked their corporate entrenched position for an admirable duration of time.

bsaul 13y ago

started developping apps for mobile in 2009. at that time, i aimed for ios development and blackberry. it took me 2 months to get my first app on ios, and i thought "ok, now let's start learning about blackberry". So, i downloaded their doc. iirc, they had three ways to develop apps. one was using web technology, and you couldn't do much. then they had two different sets of java apis : an old, discontinued one, with which you seemed to be able to have things work, and a new one, soon to be released, and undocumented. so i installed their sdk, on my mac, and tried to run a "hello world". but their sdk required windows, because the simulator didn't exist on mac. i had just bought and dual-boot installed a windows 7. but the sdk was just for xp, so i had to run an XP vm inside my windows. then i launched eclipse, to launch the simulator, to launch the Java program that was supposed to run my hello world. i never was patient enough for that hello world to show. then i said " well...let's get back to that once a customer ask for a blackberry development". and guess what, that customer never came.

epoxyhockey 13y ago
so i installed their sdk In 2010, I didn't even get this far.
wsc981 13y ago
Your experience reminds me of an amusing open letter by a developer (original blog is down, I found a copy) to Developer Relations of RIM: https://www.memonic.com/user/ChrisPolus/folder/4738150b-bd22-4421-a2de-9053de6123be/id/1qNYw https://www.memonic.com/user/ChrisPolus/folder/4738150b-bd22...
JesseObrien 13y ago
I had almost this exact same scenario happen to me. As a developer, I was excited to see what new fun things at the time (2009) were coming out of RIM. To my dismay, like yours, I couldn't even get a hello world to run after much tinkering and configuring. After I learned that they didn't even use the SDK they released into the wild in their own development, I knew it was a lost company. Dogfood and all that.

programminggeek 13y ago

Inventory kills hardware companies.

Raphmedia 13y ago

Good riddance. I was a fan, until I actually had to contact their customer support. Bought an android right after.

codeoclock 13y ago

So is this it then? They're finally gone?

eliben 13y ago

It's amazing what a killer the smartphone market turned out to be. Nokia. RIM. Microsoft are in bad trouble. Intel. who else?

colmvp 13y ago
Is Intel really in any trouble? They're got a huge dominance on laptop/desktop processors, no?
- eliben 13y ago
  Desktops are a huge, but declining business. In laptops they already have serious competition in Samsung's ARM-based Chromebooks. Besides, laptops also don't grow nearly as fast as smartphones and tablets. In markets, it's the growth that matters most, not the current revenue.
  - seabrookmx 13y ago
    Android runs on x86, and Bay Trail could put Intel right back in the game if they get vendors on board: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-intel-atom-z3770-tested/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-in...
    - eliben 13y ago
      Intel's Atom line has been announced circa the time of the original iPhone. Should I say more?
  - tsotha 13y ago
    Intel is fine. They have such a huge manufacturing and capital advantage they can afford to lose time after time, whereas the likes of AMD and ARM can only afford to lose once. Intel will own the mobile space in a decade or so.
    - daliusd 13y ago

tareqak 13y ago

Press results from BB: http://press.blackberry.com/financial/2013/blackberry-announces-preliminary-second-quarter-fiscal-2014-resu.html http://press.blackberry.com/financial/2013/blackberry-announ...

moca 13y ago

I have built software for large BlackBerry customers and met with RIMM people before. 3 years ago, I had suggested they should create an enterprise-oriented Android phones, such like Amazon created media-oriented tablets. 3 years ago, RIMM was still the #1 in enterprise smartphone market, and they had great chance to succeed in that area. However, most companies are afraid to compete on fair battle background (Android). So instead of one, RIMM chose to fight 4 battles at the same time, hardware, software, ecosystem, marketing, and it lost on all of them. Now it is too late to change the fate. RIMM management was too afraid to change (really really afraid). It is said when I met RIMM people, and saw they couldn't do anything to save the sinking ship.

bio4m 13y ago

Speaking as an enterprise customer on long upgrade cycles, RIM/Blackberry badly judged the situation vis a vis their enterprise customer base. The new Z10 was not compatible with their large install base of Blackberry Enterprise Server. Anyone still running BES at the time the Z10 was introduced was likely to be a shop interested in security and control of the mobile platform their end users were using. Which is why businesses like my employer and many others kept buying BB OS7 devices (did you notice they didnt break numbers out and actually mentioned BBOS7 as a significant portion during their investor call ?) TL;DR: They thought all their enterprise customers would upgrade fast, they guessed wrong.

tossaway1900 13y ago

We're closing in on the launch of cross-platform BBM, and much of the work for that wasn't even done internally. They contracted that stuff out. Now they're cutting actual BB people. A lot of it is dead weight, and the usual bloated middle management, but I can't wait to see who else gets the axe here. Make no mistake, the goal is to sell the company at this point. That is why BBM is suddenly the focus. They know that they aren't going to stay afloat with phone sales. They'll cut to the bone, and beef up one of their main commodities (BBM) until the sale happens.

HorizonXP 13y ago
This is incorrect. It was mostly done in-house, with some outside help.
- tossaway1900 13y ago
  Mostly? This may depend on perspective. The infrastructure behind the app is definitely in-house, but the UI isn't at all.

kineticfocus 13y ago

The juxtaposition of these two headlines on Ars struck me with some awe: "Grand Theft Auto V rakes in over $1 billion in three days", "Blackberry warns of near-$1 billion loss this quarter". Especially since they're more tangible 'billions' than the Instagram deal.

contextual 13y ago

It just occurred to me that BlackBerry is playing a brilliant strategy. This billion dollar writedown lowers the stocks so it can be taken private. Meanwhile, BlackBerry announces the flagship Z30 to get users excited. Z10 hasn't been out that long, and already they're writing off stock? And Z10 is such an awesome phone, anyone who actually uses one loves it. It could only be for one reason, to take the company private asap. I expect announcement of a sale soon.

flatfilefan 13y ago

From what I have gathered they have not managed the growth hiring people below the original level. A company with 12000 employes should be unmanageable because of bureaucracy anyway. After some point new people only slow you down. Hope the old core is still there and something will finally come out of this.

FkZ 13y ago

Now where will I have to go for a keyboard and an OS not by Google?