What killed Blackberry? Employees started buying their own devices

Not saying this is typical, but here is my experience of Blackberry.

I was in IT support at the time they came out. One of the things I hated about IT support, and I found it common with most colleagues, was the idea that if you are in IT, every thing with a plug or batteries is some how part of an IT person's skill set. Because we are the clever mysterious people who can fix the server, we must also be able to explain the MD's new HiFi to him, fix the microwave or mobile phone, or some such.

So, out comes Blackberry and it suddenly becomes the executive's toy of choice, and we were expected to support them. No one asked, there was no meeting or consideration, they just bought Blackberrys themselves, bought them in and expected us to be configuring and supporting them. Its was like a suddenly change in infrastructure that just arrived because individuals insisted on it. And because usually these were senior people, management expected us to play ball. It was kinda like the whole system being windows and one day some one installs Linux and expects it to be instantly supported and integrated, regardless of whether or not the company software actually ran on it. And early on, that wasn't trivial.

So, what happened in my IT circles was that Blackberry got a bad name because its was a toy executives lumped on us with out any consideration, let alone some sort of discussion, and heaven forbid, planning. So, the sort of back ground vibe was negative, and for many I know, remains so.

So, even though all these years on it is likely to be very unfair, I still see Blackberry as representing arrogant unthinking executives and the resulting headaches, and there for negative.

Edit: And I missed the obvious. Im so brain dead at times....

It is suggested that employees buying their own phones killed the Blackberry. Yet, ironically, in my experience at least, it was employees buying Blackberrys that got them their traction in the first place.

What killed the Blackberry?

Blackberry made a tremendously successful high featured phone. Then Steve Jobs and Apple released a full-fledged minicomputer that fit in the palm, with a usable interface, that happened to also function as a phone.

The iPhone killed off more than the Blackberry. It killed all off all phones in favor of small computers that happen to function as phones.

In 1998-2002, Blackberries really were the peak of ease of use and efficient communication/calendar management. Every executive/financial trader/beltway insider had one. The early 800/900 series Blackberry were like the iPhone of 2007.

In 2007 the iPhone was seen as an oddity by those who used their blackberries for business - without a keyboard, and really rudimentary communication tools, it wasn't ready for real-time business communication. But wow - that browser, and maps app was something else; and then Apple let third parties develop applications for the iPhone...

By 2009, after a couple iterations of the iPhone, I was running a network engineering team, and provided everyone on the team a blackberry so they could communicate real time with each other (We had a corporate BES server). Every single one of them was left in a desk drawer, as people ignored them and just connected their iPhone to their iMap account and used SMS for the real time stuff.

I just got back from a 4 week engagement in Singapore, and I was working daily with fifteen people in five organizations across four companies, distributed across three sites and field visits. We had to perform real-time communication during some particularly tricky diagnostic event on hardware, at the same time we were tracking some configuration remediation in a meter-lab. Every single person present (except for one poor Field Engineering manager from California who showed up with a non-GSM android) kept in touch with WhatsApp. We didn't even have to supply the four college students we hired to do some field-evaluations with phones - they showed up with their own devices (all Androids), and we simply added their accounts to our group chat system. Latency was on the order of a second even with Singapore's surprisingly iffy data environment (at least from the perspective of my California AT&T iPhone)

I think a major contributor to the death of blackberry was a combination of iMap ports open to the internet + Exchange Support in iPhone + awesome replacements for BBMS (inexpensive SMS, Viber, Whatsapp, etc...) - every key advantage of the Black Berry, with the exception of that keyboard, has an equivalent or better replacement today on the Android/IOS platform, with the addition of a world class app suite that's available on the Android/iPhone, but will never, ever, come to the Blackberry (except in the form of Android sideloading - but that further kills the need to develop blackberry specific apps)

That's what killed the Blackberry.

Here's my 2 cents, I worked as an intern (coop) and have subsequently worked in other tech companies in Waterloo that have ex-RIM employees. I think the problem was mainly managers, a lot of the managers didn't program, some held cs degrees but they hadn't programmed in a while to the point where they really couldn't really access the code, so basically never really looked at code (the code itself was ok because other programmers did). However, what did happen was a lot of managers started accessing their team based on how much they looked like they were doing, in short how busy they looked. Some of the smartest developers are terrible and office politics, emails and at meetings . Without emails or engaging in meetings it gave an impression that the developers didn't care, I've seen some incredible developers get fired because they didn't fit the "company culture." This was acceptable because "company culture" was in at the time, but it was just a way to support manager bias. For example, I knew this guy who would usually come to work late and only answer emails at lunch and keep a fairly chill attitude, but would usually stay late 6-7 until he did his 8+ hours, however in the eyes of the manager who was there from 9-5, the picture looked completely different, he was fired a few months later. Now I was there for a short time and only part of one team, so I can't speak for the whole organization, but I've worked for other tech firms in the area whose managers were ex-RIM and they basically did the exact same thing. In short, 1) having mangers that are heading an engineering team should be programming 2) employees should be peer-reviewed and not at the mercy of the managers (a lot of sucking up happens when the manager has that much power)

This probably isn't the main thing that killed RIM, there were probably hundreds of reasons, but over time this put in a culture of complacency, and there probably isn't much upper management could have done, because it was all done for the sake of improving "company culture"

So...once users were able to exert a choice, they opted for products which benefitted themselves more? This argument seems to admit that Blackberry products were inferior at the time. It's like saying that what killed IE6 was allowing people to install Firefox.

The author says, "BlackBerrys have never been particularly attractive, cutting-edge, or user-friendly." I've never actually owned a BlackBerry, but I was under the impression that they were some of the best devices around, especially for doing business, before the iPhone came along. I've heard people say that they still believe the BlackBerry had the most superior email functionality of any device to date. The iPhone changed all that, of course, but before, I think they were very good devices.

The title is referring to 'Corporate Employees' as opposed to employees of Blackberry.

The Thesis goes: employees bought iPhones and brought them to work, enough (or senior enough) employees were able to force IT departments to support them. Afterwards no-one wanted to use their crappy old phones.

If only this could happen for Browsers, too!

I think it's time to start a campaign for 'Bring Your Own Browser To Work Day".

Blackberry was the best smartphone with a keyboard. It was not only the choice of enterprises, but also the choice of users who do not like touchscreen as a keyboard. The smaller screen (because of the presence of the keyboard)) means also better battery duration. They have killed all these advantages to become a pale copy of iphone with a bad UX, half assed between full touchscreen and keyboard. I think that copying iphone ergonomy was a bad marketing move that place them as a follower. I think blackberry could succeed as the leader of smartphones with keyboard. Now, they have lost their soul. Of course, this is only a single aspect, the other points described in many other posts are also important.

Unless I am missing something, the title of this article is very misleading. Also, very low on content IMHO.

> Consumers care about attractive designs, user-friendly interfaces, and innovative features.

Tangentially- when I went to check out the Z10 it was locked in a demo mode. I couldn't figure out how to look at anything on the phone that they didn't want me to see with "helper" sales pitch notes. I finally found a real phone one of the employees was carrying and was able to try it out (and buy something different).

I couldn't believe they (or AT&T) would think so little about their customers and providing a real experience on the device. It insulted me. Maybe it changed later...

I'd love it if Blackberry switched to Android. The top-end Bolds look great, and you just can't beat their keyboards for smashing out a length of text longer than a sentence.

They tried to force a Blackberry on me at my last job, I just turned it down as I had no desire to carry around multiple phones with me.

This article suggests that BB lost because it did not focus on the consumer soon enough. I'm going to completely disagree and argue that even if they had done this, they would still be dying now. Their fate would have been the same had they made consumer friendly phones in 2008.

In 2008 I believed android would dominate the smartphone market. This was even before the first android phone was brought to market. Most consumers had not even heard of android back then and the iPhone was quickly gaining market share. Why did I think this back then?

What killed BB is, at core, the result of Geography. It is not only the fate of societies, a la Jared Diamond, but the fates of tech companies that geography can influence. In 2008, I was living in northern California and you could sense the amount of developer interest in android. What android did and BB couldn't do (or really try) was to win over developers. Many were upset at Apple's process for publishing apps. Google did everything to address those concerns. Instead of winning over consumers first, android won over the developers who then made the apps to bring those consumers. BB was just too far away and too out of touch to see any of this.

The world is not flat. Place matters. If it were as simple as focusing on consumers, why did Nokia lose despite doing this all along? -Geography! And why did android win despite not initially focusing on consumers? (the G1 was a crappy phone). The winners (android and IOS) won because they're located in Silicon valley where most of the best developers are. The losers (Nok, RIMM) lost because they weren't.

What really killed BBRY was not providing any added value. And actually destroying any added value that they had over competitors (I made another comment about that in another thread — I don't want to get too annoying).

The "BYOD" culture is some crucial damage for BlackBerry. But what will wipe them off the map isn't really that, but rather, not being even an option for a second device, enterprise-only. Because they've got nothing to add.

The enabler for the death of Blackberry was Microsoft Exchange / ActiveSync. When executives realized that the much cooler, fun, life-integrated iPhone could also hook into their email, that forced IT's hand in allowing alternative platforms.

If the iPhone didn't appeal to the top tier, the Blackberry would have reigned supreme in corporations.