Too little too late for Blackberry indeed… imagine, in the same week that the company has reported a massive loss, huge employee cuts/layoffs, and yet we have a new Blackberry device coming to market, the Z30, which I find of interest is not even featured on their website and the Youtube video showing off the device doesn’t have a link to the website for more info – sorry to dump on you Blackberry but good luck with that one!
Plain and simple, Blackberry 10 OS appears to have flopped… well, actually the OS itself may not be the flop but the real issue is likely that developers simply could care less about it… oh, and neither could the consumer! Blackberry is gasping for air, their lifeblood is now some of the Canadian faithful orgs and government agencies who try to put on a smile and convince others that the Blackberry mobile platform is wonderful for them, oh, and it’s very Canadian too!
So, we have another device, this one being slightly smaller than the Z10 with a 5″ screen providing more screen real estate that nobody is going to see I suppose. And then there’s the company. Blackberry made no secret of the fact that they are ripe for acquisition… that in itself was likely the final nail in the coffin for the company. I mean really, why would someone buy them up when they can simply wait and grab the pieces that are made available upon the eventual yard sale that will take place. And then there’s the leadership… seriously, have the shareholders not asked for the head of CEO Thorsten Heins yet? The company has been late to market with all their solutions, trying to catch up and chip away at the iOS and Android marketshare but failing miserably. The tablet was a flop (have you ever seen one in the wild?), and then the Z10 came to market looking pretty nice albeit a couple of years too late as the only users they would likely grab have already fallen in love with their iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S device. Developers are non existent in the Blackberry ecosystem and for good reason, there’s simply too much money to be made developing for iOS.
Blackberry might want to consider dropping staff from the top rather than from the bottom of the ladder and perhaps the only viable solution for the company might be to abandon their own OS and go open and roll out a Blackberry Android device. perhaps the best thing they could do as well would be to abandon the name as well! A sad state but I guess none of us are surprised. The Canadian in me has tried to support their efforts over the years (See archive on LBSzone), those efforts falling on deaf ears though with not a single email or tweet ever acknowledged or responded to by anyone at the company. I gave up in efforts to test their devices or attend any developer events so providing hands-on demos or experiences was not possible. I did share articles and posts over the years from some of the developers of LBS solutions, however, that crowd has vanished and I suppose the posts tagged with Blackberry will be a thing of the past on this blog.