More trouble for Blackberry....

Shares in smartphone maker Blackberry have dived after it reported an $84m (£55m) loss for the three months to 1 June.

The figure was better than the $518m loss for the same period last year, but much worse than analysts' forecasts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23097579

Ouch it certainly clearly shows that the new BB10 has not saved them and they are still losing money.

Also Its been confirmed that no BB10 OS update for the playbook tablet which I have. Ouch!! I'm not having much luck with updates lately!

You aren't having much luck that is for sure mate. It was kind of expected they weren't going to update the playbook after they said they thought tablets were useless.

Nothing remotely surprising here, to be honest.

BB10 was destined to be a flop from day one.

Well they kinda did say they would, but then also at the same time went on about tablets being useless, so i guess the writing was on the wall. It's still an ok tablet. But I use my HTC One more now anyways, and still got an Android tablet which is rooted and at least runs Android 4.0. Get more use out of that now.

A decent phone with a big enough screen does enough to bridge the gap really though. I've not really been using tablets that much of late. When I am hope it's mostly laptop, or desktop if i am gaming or video editing etc. like a tablet when I travel though on long distance trips, then they really come in to their own. The playbook is good cos it's quite portable and I have unlimited tethering with three so i can still carry it out and get online with it.

That's down to how BB have mismanaged the whole thing. It was a platform with a lot of potential, but everyone from the engineers right down to the marketing people at BB have messed up.

Thorsten is under real pressure now. The Z10 will be seen pretty much as a write off. I think BB survival pretty much hinges now on the Q10 which will have sales figures by the end of the next quarter. Pretty clear that the core BB users have given full touch a vote of no confidence and not enough non bb people have been convinced. If the Q10 meets the needs of the BB faithful then that will buy them some time, but with the share price tumbling, down to $10 now, they are on shaky ground. Developers current and potential ones will simply not bother making apps for a platform that is not selling. So no apps, will mean little interest from joe public who are spoilt for choice with Android and IOS.

A takeover may not be far away.

I think this was fairly easy to see happening. Despite their best attempts, nobody was interested in BB10. They spent a lot of money paying for celebrity endorsements and ad campaigns, but it has just been too late.

Blackberry sealed their fate by attempting to ignore the existence of the iPhone and the change in market that it brought. By the time they tried to compete with the dreadful Storm, it was too late even then, and that was 2008 before Android had taken off as well.

As I've been saying, Blackberry are heading down the same road as Palm. There's a possibility the company could be sold or acquired, but ultimately they are headed for the technological scrapheap.

I'm stuck on this contract with Blackberry, and I'm glad,
because Blackberry phones are the only phones that freeze 2 times a day, 10 times a week with the annoying timer,

Never had this problem with many other phones,
big mistake I made was getting Blackberry!

I completely agree with the both of you they really put more into ads than the actual architecture of BB10. I think they should of released the Q10 first If it gets taken over It wouldn't be a big shock honestly. BB have been of the market for a while and they haven't succeeded. HTC were in a similar situation but pulled the stops out and think they have managed to sort themselves out.

That aside, it was still doomed.
Even if they'd gotten it to the market a year earlier as they'd originally planned, the chances were slim it would turn things around for them:[list][*]iOS and Android were already huge[*]There's no compelling reason for most people to switch from those OSs to BB10[*]It's that different to older BB OSs that even pre-existing users are likely to feel they may as well go the whole hog and get a better handset/OS instead[*]They launched the Z10 before the Q10, further alienating existing Blackberry users[*]There's nothing particularly impressive about the hardware[*]They've ignored the lower-end of the smartphone market which, in the UK at least, has been propping Blackberry up for years[*]They went for a gesture UI, pretty much the worst possible choice[/list]
With those sorts of ingredients, it was always going to be a recipe for disaster.



I'm not sure that's likely even now - who wants to jump onto a sinking ship, especially one in shark-infested waters.

Well HTC have shown how you turn things around, the right way. When you have your backs against the wall, you either sit down, put away your weapons and await the angel of death, or you get the F**k up, rally the troops, get organized and give it one last mighty assault because you have no other choice, nowhere else to go, you have to put everything in to it, then if you fail so be it. HTC knew they could ill afford to bring out a half baked phone which may be ok----ish, if it doesn't catch the eye, if it doesn't have a refined UX and lacks general polish, it's game over. So they went and created a phone with a wickedly good screen, excellent speakers and mics, decent camera great premium build etc etc. The One is a show stopper and look at HTC getting a lot of praise and I think shifting good numbers now.

Let's contrast that with BBs efforts. You could say in a similar boat, HTC had made great phones before but had fallen off the rails somewhat with stiff competition. Samsung was to HTC what Apple were to Blackberry. So surely everyone at BB must have known and thought, ok, we really need to deliver. There are some fantastic phones rocking a very good Android OS now, and Iphone sales have always been good, so they knew what they were up against, no excuses.

So they release the Z10, a good phone, good screen, good and potentially great OS but is just ok looking. The concept is a good one, the implementation was half baked. The competition, full HD screens, quad core CPUs etc. Good was never going to cut it. They needed to wow potential buyers, developers. Along comes the HTC One, Xperia Z, Samsung S4 and then the Z10 becomes nothing more than a paper weight.

I admit I was somewhat excited when they unveiled the Z10 because you need choice and variety in the market, so the more the merrier as far as I am concerned. but I think BB10 has only been half baked. It could have looked and functioned a lot better. Love the concept, the swiping gesture based stuff is great, as I got used to it on the playbook, works pretty well. But it just seems to be underdeveloped So it's really disappointing.

BB are supposed to have a bigger, better model due out end of the year or early next year, but I wonder now if that will be dropped. We may see another qwerty model instead and will probably just target the corporate market. Hard times for BB. They will probably rapidly downsize and turn their focus away from the mainstream market, and target the corporate market. Go back to their bread and butter. But even in that market I don't think they are safe, as the others have caught up, there is no BIS anymore so BB10 looks like it will have less appeal in the corporate world.

Well if it happened they will take what's useful and bin the rest. Be like going in to a breakers yard and salvaging the spare parts.

Regards to your other point, I do think Q10 should have been released first or if at all possible at the same time as the Z10.

Someone one who wants to buy out BBM and incorporate similar thing into there phone skins perhaps.

Well some of us saw this as soon as the z10 was released some people got way too excited with the 'game changing' phone.

There simply is no reason to buy a BB over android/iOS regardless of bb10 and some of us could see it and customers are voting with their feet. Something like 2 million or so z10s sold shocking.

Thats strange, as BB10 for the Playbook is available ... not a production version, sure, but it is available ... if you know where to look.

I just hope that BB is still going when I come to my next corporate phone upgrade.

As much as I like the iPhone, at the end of the day it is a toy. Same with the SGS, at least in a corporate environment. BB gives a much better mobile email environment, and I really do regret choosing the iPhone (same goes for quite a lot of colleagues, who've found the iPhone well below par on email, it does suck in quite a big way).