Blackberry had its first good idea in years | Hacker News Reader

Blackberry had its first good idea in years

wired.com

51 pointsboston199927 comments

What I've read about Blackberry it seems like they entered the phone war when it was at level 1 and then tried to reinvent themselves when it had reached level 10. Guys like Mike Lazaridis talk as if they didn't realise that shift had happened. That the smartphone game had become so intensely competitive that their problem went far beyond picking the wrong strategies; they simply didn't have the ability to execute at the level required by the upgraded game.

This seems like a common mistake made by people who win early and win big, they don't necessarily have a proper perspective on the components of their success that were luck or timing.

Yep. Success hides failure. A company can do 9 things right and one thing wrong, but if the company does really well then people assume that all 10 things are right. In Blackberry's case it was a lot more than one thing wrong.

I agree. It seems like they won twice - once in the late 90s with businesses, and again in the middle of the next decade with consumers. The first comeback was easy enough, that they assumed another one wouldn't be too bad. The whole ecosystem passed them by. To be relevant again they would need to create an entire software portfolio too. Or go into a niche, but they may be bleeding too much money to survive that way.

I'm surprised that the author of the article left out QNX. QNX is already the OS of choice for the medical industry and is doing well in other "niche" markets like automotive. QNX in Action: Audi FPK Driver Information Display: http://youtu.be/Wlm6lD23d0g

They're still playing off the good idea the had for buying QNX 4 years ago now.

Without reading the article I had assumed they were going to be talking about QNX. That is basically keeping the company alive.

Wow that YT clip is awful, its laggy as crap :( 3d map and big menu both drop down to single digit fps at times. How can you sell $100K car with laggy dashboard? :(

“That might be exactly the right transition for BlackBerry to make,” says Dulaney. “The problem is, you just can’t make that transition in the eyes of Wall Street.”

In that case, Wall Street is the problem.

No, Wall Street is the owner.

You're not actually contradicting his statement, you know. A good many of Blackberry's problems trace back to the company's owners.

Sensational headline. Blackberry has made many mistakes in the past 5 years but to say that this is its first good idea is wrong.

Buying QNX was the true brilliant move on Blackberry's part, it is a very strong platform IMO. Their downfall has been a failure to think laterally on how to leverage it outside of what their core market was. They are now being forced to do that and I think it will work very well for them if it hasn't come too late. I very much want to see them succeed.

QNX is still licensed though black berry (and has been before and after the recent rebuilding). If you buy hardware having anything to do with Optical Rings or Fiber Routers, it likely runs QNX. The goal of their 'restructuring' was to increase profits from software sales (I.E.: Licensing QNX).

The problem is QNX was perfectly profitable on its own doing nothing but that. Now Blackberry has a phone and OS division, one is pulling both down.

Having an investment from a company like Blackberry may on the surface look just the same as any other investment. But in fact things are dramatically different. You may very well end up having your stock sold to the highest bidder at some future liquidation auction (there is a definitive chance of Blackberry ending like that) and then suddenly you find yourself with a new partner that you didn't choose. One that may even be in competition with you.

Another resource that Blackberry owns (QnX) is at risk of having the same happen to it, fortunately for the QnX users there are a very large number of companies that depend on the QnX for their real time needs including various governments so likely QnX will survive a meltdown.

The QNX kernel was released under open source in 2007. Not all other middleware is released though ...

Right, but it was closed again in 2010 and I'm not quite sure what the status is today but as far as I am aware you can not just go and fork it or even build it.

And note it was closed by blackberry after they purchased qnx.

The hyperbole of this line demeans the whole article, 'one of this century’s biggest corporate disasters ' 14 years into the 21st Century? Come on.

I interpreted it as "one of the biggest corporate disasters of the last 14 years," and would give the author the benefit of the doubt that that is what she meant.

Seriously. I think the global oil companies will have something to show us about corporate disaster before the century is up.

In any case, 86 years is a lot of years remaining for someone to do a worse job than BlackBerry.

Off the top of my head Enron in 2001, WorldCom in 2002, Lehman Brothers and AIG in 2008, and GM and Chrysler in 2009 all seem to be better fit than Blackberry for the 'century's biggest corporate disasters'.

The biggest Canadian corporate disaster this century swamps this hiccough from BlackBerry. Nortel was worth almost $400B in 2000 and is now worth $4M, essentially losing $400B of shareholder value this century.

This bodes ill for the rest of the article ...

Blackberry just doesn't have traction outside of the US, since most of the rest of the world deeply distrust the architecture of the Blackberry system (i.e. all data sent back to US-based servers). I think this is the one thing they must fix - the perception by the world that Blackberry is just a front for the CIA. Laugh all you want: I've heard this expressed in more than one location here in Europe, enough so that even if its a falsehood, its a solid one that isn't going anywhere. RIM(/Blackberry) haven't done very much to assuage this fear, alas .. and more to the point, seem resistant to doing so, which make the suspicions even more warranted.

The earnings don't support your anecdotal hypothesis. Blackberry had explosive growth in South America and Southeast Asia after the US market stagnated around 2009. Blackberry's ONLY growth has been in emerging markets for the past 5 years, however even that is slowing down, but I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that's due to any sort of connection to US Intelligence.

"since most of the rest of the world deeply distrust the architecture of the Blackberry system (i.e. all data sent back to US-based servers). I think this is the one thing they must fix - the perception by the world that Blackberry is just a front for the CIA"

I found that funny because that's the exact opposite of what actually happened. BlackBerry was to secure and certain governments couldn't spy on their citizens. Here is an article from where this misinformation stemmed from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-10830485

I'm guessing people only read headlines and a lot of them had "BlackBerry" and "Security" in them and most people jumped to conclusions.

BlackBerry has many NOC's and not one is in the US.

Blackberry is not a US company and is not based in the US. So it's just sheer ignorance on the part of your friends to assume that it is.

I'll never understand why BB failed to play up the "hey, did you notice that we weren't in any of those leaked documents as a partner of the NSA - unlike all three of our major competitors" angle...

But it seems that they have a lot of marketing fails, that's only one of the more recent.

(1) Blackberry isn't an American company.

(2) They don't have a ton of traction anywhere these days, but the US was the first market they lost. What growth they have now is in developing nations.

(3) sigh

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