back to article BlackBerry BB10 devices refuse to leap off shelves

So you’re an ageing push-email legend finally selling phones with a shiny modern new operating system, relieving years of pent-up demand. Wouldn’t you want to SHOUT about how many people want them? BlackBerry spurned the opportunity to do just that in its earnings releases today, covering the first full quarter selling BB10 …

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  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. ItsNotMe
    FAIL

    BlackBerry nixes BlackBerry 10 on PlayBooks

    Way to go Thor baby...better start looking for a new job...

    ...'cause your company is now on life support...and will be dead by the end of 2013.

    So, it looks like I can put my Playbook away in the closet, along with my copies of MS Bob & Vista.

    Nice going "The company formerly known as RIM". Nothing like LYING to your customers. Even Apple isn't THAT bad...well almost.

    But, it probably doesn't matter anyway, as they will be out of business, LONG before BB11 would have been released.

    1. Anomalous Cowturd
      Meh

      Re: BlackBerry nixes BlackBerry 10 on PlayBooks

      I was looking forward to getting BB10 on my Playbook, but as I only paid £100 for a 64 gig model, and it's still a nice piece of kit, I'll give it a "meh".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: BlackBerry nixes BlackBerry 10 on PlayBooks

        You get what you pay for!

      2. durandal

        Re: BlackBerry nixes BlackBerry 10 on PlayBooks

        That was my reasoning, although given my purchasing habits, I may as well have just bought a betamax and be done with it.

  3. Richard 23

    We seem to have an Attack of the Clones?

    Or a schizophrenic commentard?

    1. vagabondo

      Re: We seem to have an Attack of the Clones?

      I thought that it was a slip by AudiGuy/ItsNotMe revealing aliases used for nefarious purposes.

      1. ThisMayNotBeMyRealName
        Happy

        Re: We seem to have an Attack of the Clones?

        And now I have a 3rd one.

  4. Levente Szileszky
    IT Angle

    I don't really understand the gloomy predictions...

    ...at all because it was expected, to sell around 1-2M new devices per month - if you remember Q1 ended by May so for example in the US (along with EU their premier BB10 market is NA) they only had the touch-only Z10 and only 2 months on the market, Q10 launched only this month YET they managed to get a 30% sales boost in the US which I consider actually rather impressive against HTC One, S4 etc and the (mistakenly) rumored iPhone 5S.

    Unless they bring in enough to cover their support cost BB have to kill their old junk BBOS very quickly and move everybody to BB10, say, by the end of the year. Again, do not bring another BBOS device to the market, BB, not even in Asia where it's beloved unless you will make money on it, period - rather just flood them with BB10, your margins will be still better.

    Three things BB quickly needs to address or there will be a sharp downturn by the end of the year:

    1. fix the entire Android-compatibility MESS - the whole idea of side-loading through 3rd-party PC software, web plugins etc is just nonsense, completely idiotic, it SHOULD HAPPEN ON THE PHONE and they should run JUST FINE, all the way up to Android 4.2 apps (IIRC currently they only guarantee 'til Gingerbread aka 2.3 which makes any modern Android app a hit-or-miss game, with miss happening more often).. this means VERY QUICK ROLLOUT OF BB10.2 upgrade, ASAP, before their current Aug-Sep target.

    2. BB have to have a top-tier device: quad-core 1080p device, with a screen of 5" or so, 2GB RAM etc, with all sorts of premium features, to make sure it has a real premium device - just look at Sony's just-announced 6.4"-sized media & productivity monster Xperia Z Ultra, which can double as an underwater camera recording HDR video etc...

    3. BB needs massive BB10 sales numbers: push Q5 very hard on every market, make massive sales numbers, along with pushing Z10 at a new, lower price, giving up its price point to the new top-tier device I was describing above, all being backed by an all-out BB v10.2 rollout marketing push (new features etc.)

    The stock will still tumble but that's expected, with over 40% shorted while BBRY gaining almost 2/3rd YTY there's a huge group of parasites who are trying to minimize their mounting losses, it was inevitable - but I also think they will end up paying through their noses by the end of the year...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fascinating

    Two market leaders - RIM and Nokia, get kicked out by phone upstarts Apple and Samsung. How often does that happen? It's like top seeded players being knocked out in the early stages at Wimbledon... wait a sec...

    1. Levente Szileszky
      WTF?

      Re: Fascinating

      Fascinating how suddenly people make up crap on the fly - upstarts like Apple and Samsung... huh?

    2. TheVogon
      Mushroom

      Re: Fascinating

      Nokia's smart phone sales are growing at over 100% a year though - rather different from the sinking Blackberry ship! Windows Phone already pushed Blackberry into 4th place.

      1. Levente Szileszky
        Stop

        Re: Fascinating

        Pleahhse, stop repeating this MSFT_induced BS - that's BEFORE BB10 devices launched and no, Nokia is actually STILL LOSING market share among smartphones.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Fascinating

          Since the BB10 devices launched, Nokia increased market share and Blackberry share decreased:

          http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/Windows-sees-steady-growth-in-Q1-2013

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fascinating

        Hi RICHTO

        More likely, it looks like the market share results for this quarter will still find Blackberry just ahead of Windows Phone.

        Does that mean that BB's sales are showing the same trajectory as you claim for WP? And if their market shares are largely static, that means everyone else is doing very well too.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Fascinating

          "More likely, it looks like the market share results for this quarter will still find Blackberry just ahead of Windows Phone."

          Blackberry are already way behind Windows Phone and the gap is growing - see the Kantar figures above....

          1. Levente Szileszky
            WTF?

            Re: Fascinating

            Yeah, see those well-known, long-trusted "Kantar figures" (sic!) above...

            ...seriously: WTF?

    3. LarsG

      Re: Fascinating

      Empires fall, empires decline.

      Roman

      British

      USSR

      Nokia

      Blackberry

      USA

    4. Mark .

      Re: Fascinating

      Um no, phone market is now Samsung 1st, Nokia 2nd. So Nokia have lost out to Samsung, but they've been in the phone market for years too. And describing these companies as "upstarts" is laughable - they're the ones who are multinationals in multiple industries, where as Nokia pretty much only does phones.

      I'm still amused that one million sales was hailed as an amazing success for the new IOS platform in 2007, but multiple millions is seen as bad when it's a new Nokia or BB platform.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fascinating

        No one said Apple and Samsung were upstarts.

        The are "phone upstarts". Yes, Apple had the Apple II in the 1970s but only in 2007 did they enter the phone market - Nokia have been involved with GSM since 1989.

        Please read carefully.

  6. RichardB

    Anyone considered

    That if they pulled their fingers out and shipped a decent open OS on the playbook sales would skyrocket?

    At the moment though, with so many of the major tablet apps blackballed (skype and netflix for instance) no one really wants to touch it? Mind you, as a cheap pr0n slab it's without equal...

  7. Levente Szileszky
    Stop

    Pleahhhse. We understand that all you BB users are pissed because you will never get your shiny BB10 but it wasn't unexpected and Heins is doing the right thing: cutting cost on outdated device support, making sure critical, growth-related development gets ramped up instead.

    I have a Touchpad and I still love it and I still think Apotheker was a totally incompetent retard who ran amok with the blessing of an utterly clueless HP board and I don't think Whitman is any better - but I realized it's over for my Touchpad, I should just hope WebOS or at least its great features make it over to new devices (see iOS and Android, they stole most of their current UI features from WSebOS - which made Apotheker look even more retarded when he didn't even sue anyone after HP admittedly bought Palm for its patent portfolio...)

    Let it go and hope for the OS to survive - I don't have asingle BB device but we need competition more than ever.

  8. Slap

    Missed the boat

    The problem with RIM, or blackberry as it's now known, is that they rested on their laurels. There was no real further innovation on their part until they realised that they were losing market ground. By the time they came up with the current models Android and iOS ruled roost and in the process also took away a significant number of blackberry customers. However good the new BB OS is, it's too little way too late.

    You can have a f'ing awesome barn, with a door to die for, but if the horse already gone....

  9. FanMan
    Happy

    what we need

    is an iphone with a blackberry keyboard

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: what we need

      Or a Cessna 120 with an F-35 Lightning cockpit.

  10. asdf
    FAIL

    >BlackBerry turnaround after the once-leading smartphone platform fell into fourth place behind Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android and even lowly Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500).

    Wow and unlike Microsoft they don't have billions in the bank to play the long game. Stick a fork in em sadly.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Actually, they do... at least two billions

      1. asdf
        Headmaster

        yeah

        Saw after I posted they do have 3 billion in the bank with low debt so they will be around awhile (lol perhaps longer than Nokia). Its not Microsoft's money but its more than I expected. Still to be passed by Microsoft in market share has to sting.

    2. Levente Szileszky
      IT Angle

      Except they have ~80M paying customers MSFT never had so just stick a fork into WP and forget about it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Except that they are loosing 4 million customers a quarter and accelerating- down to 70 million now....

  11. The Lord Gord

    A man walks into a bar with a Blackberry 10...

    My sides are so sore I needed surgery!!!

  12. DAN*tastik
    Unhappy

    The day the music ( re ) died

    So, Alicia Keys is not good at flogging phones either. I can imagine she got some right bollocking today at BlackBerry HQ!

    I'm afraid she will probably go back to singing again... And I really don't think she got many lessons in the meantime...

  13. Gil Grissum
    Thumb Down

    Blackberry...

    Aside from banning Heins from showing up in photos holding either phone with his "too big hands", they need to focus more on the Q10 and deploy it to all carriers, ASAP. The Android app issues need to be dealt with post haste. Samsung is encroaching on BES10 turf without requiring a server and if Apple does something like that with iOS7, the business customer base that BB is known for will bail on them completely. Heins is asleep at the wheel.

  14. James 51

    It's a pity the playbook won't get bb10. There was some speculation that it just didn't have enough RAM. Having used it for a year I don't understand all the hate it gets. Hope they keep supporting it.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Slow and steady

    At least the analysis in the post was accurate even if the implications are a little off base.

    Everyone seems to have been disappointed by the numbers except BlackBerry, since they're more or less on the money when it comes to their guidance last quarter.

    And they're forecasting a loss next quarter. Which of course will be ignored by Wall Street once again as they manipulate the hell out of this see-sawing stock.

    BBRY is a great way to make money. For the market players at least.

    The company has launched three phones in 5 months and as yet hasn't hit all markets with the phones. They've also just released the best secure MDM solution on the market. They have several more phones in the pipeline and will release cross platform BBM later this summer (by all accounts).

    They'll do ok. Far from dead yet.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Slow and steady

      Erm. you know BB10 was already completely hacked, right? http://www.secunia.com/advisories/53778

      1. Phat Tran

        Re: Slow and steady

        That was RIM alerting customers to an Adobe Flash vulnerability that nobody had yet exploited, and providing a patch to address it. Not sure how that amounts to "completely hacked".

      2. Chemist

        Re: Slow and steady

        "Erm. you know BB10 was already completely hacked, right? http://www.secunia.com/advisories/53778"

        That'd be along with every other system using the below versions Adobe Flash then - and you really should use "potentially"

        "Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code.

        The vulnerability is reported in the following products and versions:

        * Adobe Flash Player versions 11.5.502.135 and prior for Windows

        * Adobe Flash Player versions 11.5.502.136 and prior for Macintosh

        * Adobe Flash Player versions 11.2.202.258 and prior for Linux

        * Adobe Flash Player versions 11.1.115.34 and prior for Android 4.x

        * Adobe Flash Player versions 11.1.111.29 and prior for Android 3.x and 2.x

        * Adobe AIR versions 3.5.0.880 and prior for Windows

        * Adobe AIR versions 3.5.0.890 and prior for Macintosh

        * Adobe AIR version 3.5.0.880 for Android

        * Adobe AIR version 3.5.0.880 SDK and Adobe AIR version 3.5.0.890 SDK

        "

  16. ted frater

    Classic keyboard?

    Im sorry, but Im going to disagree with your statement in para 4 A classic keyboard.

    Its a childs keyboard for heavens sake! The last time a classic keyboard was offered was in the nokia 9210 range with properly spaced keys for proper typing for normal male hands.

    also going back a bit further in time has everyone forgotten the Psion 5? again designed for functionality by engineers for professional people who are still out there waiting for a modern hand set with, I say again, a proper sized keyboard.

    I know you didnt design the Q10, the problem lies with the execs at B/berry.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Coat

      Re: Classic keyboard?

      You have a child's keyboard My Lord!

      I'll wager that keyboard has never been usable by an Irish navvy with hands like steam shovels or run for a year on two AA batteries.

  17. Rob Burke

    Would buy the lovely Q10 but won't because...

    * There are a few mainstream apps I'd like but they haven't made apps for BBOS10 and there are 'currently no plans to do so'.

    * S/MIME email encryption can only be enabled on a 'work account' - on BBOS10 this means a 'BES 10' account. So, no email encryption possible with an activesync account. It's a completely artificial limitation and it infuriates me. To think you need to spend on server software just to activate a local feature that's even available on iPhone. Uuugh.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They just need to do something very simple to turn things around

    OK, the secret to turn BB around is simple. Unlock email from enterprise. Most corp users I know, including me, like the new BB models but the only reason everyone is going for other phones is that BB is locked and BIS introduces a 15-30 mins delay. Get rid of that and see the sales soar. Simple!

    1. Rob Burke

      Re: They just need to do something very simple to turn things around

      The new models don't support BIS, do support BES, do support activesync (so fine for most corps - but s/mime and some lockdown features only available with BES).

  19. ThisMayNotBeMyRealName
    Devil

    BB RIP

    Buh-bye BB.

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