Defense Department drops exclusive contract for BlackBerry | Hacker News Reader

Defense Department drops exclusive contract for BlackBerry

news.cnet.com

40 pointseplanit14 comments

It's pretty amazing how much Blackberry has lost the enterprise market in the first world, while retaining the low end "feature phone with a keyboard" market in the third world, over the past few years. It's rare that the enterprise market moves faster than consumers, but that seems to be what's happening.

Unfortunately there's basically no buyout value to the international business (Nokia is even stronger for that, although they lack a good keyboard); Android (and to some extent Windows Phone and iPhone) will eventually win there.

The Enterprise market, particularly the BES and management side, had value to buyout, even just as a best-in-class MDM solution to manage Android, iPhone, etc., but they waited too long to open up their management, and from what I've seen, Airwatch, Zenprise, Good, etc. are all better choices for crossplatform MDM.

I'm curious what you think the high end "feature phone with a keyboard" is in the the first world? Third world?

I smiled when I read the following in joeyh's usesthis:

"If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw."

(I'm referring to new sales, not existing userbase)

We don't buy high end featurephones in the first world in 2012 -- we have carrier subsidies on smartphones (with or without keyboard, but generally web browsing > texting, so I think for the kid/teen market in the US, keyboard phones aren't as popular as in Asia).

I think the US market is basically rich people or carrier subsidies on smartphones, or cheap phones (i.e. not featurephones, or maybe the very lowest tier with a camera but nothing else). Or of course people who have an old phone (probably an S60 featurephone) who just never upgrade, but they're irrelevant from a sales perspective, and will probably get pushed to a low-end Android phone on contract renewal, breakage, loss, etc.

These decisions at enterprise level are made by people who are also consumers. Away from the office, they own their own iPad or Android device, their kids own them, and they are used to them. Apple is showing us that you can take a backdoor into enterprise by capturing the consumer.

I do not mean to comment out of point, however, I just want to point out that to me, there seems to be 'something' about branding a part of the world 1st World and another 3rd World.

"Developed countries" and "Developing countries" seem better terms to describe the infrastructural distinctions.

Well, it originally came out of the Cold War, so I guess there is definitely something a little weird about it. Personally I don't really care for "developed" either though; it implies to me that those countries have achieved some peak of civilisation and don't need to change any more, which plainly isn't the case.

It's probably more pejorative than "third world", but "rich" and "poor" are probably clearer descriptions for a discussion of cellphone usage patterns than most of these euphemisms. That'd upset people even more, of course :)

You could perhaps look at "developing" in terms of economic growth - most "developed" countries have relatively low growth as their economies are mature.

That's not to say that all countries with low growth have mature economies of course, just that "developed" countries are at the economic forefront, and that "developing" countries need to make an effort to catch up or be forever "developing".

In terms that most people could understand "rich" and "poor" may be more accurate, but in terms of cell phone usage there are quite a few African countries that have widespread mobile phone networks, but few wired telephones.

You could perhaps come to think that the above sort of labels are very generic, but I do think that for a start that talk of a third world/first world split is not useful when the second world - communist russia and its ilk - doesn't exist anymore.

What are these people doing with their phones ?! U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ... said the reason was because RIM's smartphone could not keep up with its needs. Are Apple Business solutions really viable ?

I don't understand if there is a valuable reason for that or if it's just change for the sake of change. My 3 years old Blackberry fulfills all my needs. And it was made in Canada, not in a Foxconn-like plant.

BBs suck hard at everything but emails, call, texts and BBM. It's browser and map apps are appalling - and both are completely reasonable to count as "needs" in 2012.

> And it was made in Canada, not in a Foxconn-like plant.

They're not made in Canada anymore.

Would this count as the final blow to the zombie that is BlackBerry?

Startups news site bashing struggling company? Stay classy HN.

Struggling startups get a pass on HN. Struggling companies that were at the top of the food chain and tumbled to the bottom through hubris and a failure to innovate don't.

IMHO RIM is really innovative company now.

Oh thank god. That's an insane handicap today.

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