Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss | Hacker News Reader

Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

bbc.com

32 pointspercept33 comments

Microsoft subsidized development of some popular apps for Windows Phone (e.g., Angry Birds). They paid for these. They were necessary to claw away at some market share.

Chen seems to think he's entitled . . . and this is one reason why BlackBerry is utterly doomed. Now I wouldn't develop a BB app even if he paid me :-)

But while we're at it, maybe we do need some regulation, so we can hold app developers at gunpoint (because that's what laws do, in the final argument) and force them to cough up the goods. In fact, I have an old Palm Pilot VII in a box somewhere that is being discriminated against and would be perfectly useful if only it had some apps... </snark>

They did subsidize a number of major apps that come over to BlackBerry.

On the other hand, it's probably cheaper to buy a congressman or senator than it is to pay a developer to port an app.

Exactly right. I noticed this many times when living in DC. There's even a study that puts numbers on the ROI for politician-purchasing:

"In a recent study, researchers Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz calculated the total amount the corporations saved from the lower tax rate. They compared the taxes saved to the amount the firms spent lobbying for the law. Their research showed the return on lobbying for those multinational corporations was 22,000 percent. That means for every dollar spent on lobbying, the companies got $220 in tax benefits." http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget-s...

holy shit

>They did subsidize a number of major apps that come over to BlackBerry.

Subsidized, and even subsequently outsourced development to other companies, though I realize this isn't necessarily unusual. It just isn't made public.

Developing on the BlackBerry 10 OS has actually been a pleasant experience, but that was for fun rather than profit, as the numbers do not add up in their store vs the rest of the market. Their android runtime is very good and most apps run well on it, with the confidence of a modicum more sandboxing than a native android phone. I think BlackBerry's only real hope now is to get the phone into the hands of people for little to no cost and hold developer events and contests. It will cost them to have a dev community, like Microsoft learnt, but without it, they will wither even more so.

Seeing as it's a letter to Congress, maybe the phrase "Those who can't innovate, legislate" is apt...

I almost don't believe he actually feels that way, but is simply so desperate at this point that he'll try anything. It'll be interesting to see if this news affects investor sentiment.

If this weren't from bbc I would assume that someone had misquoted the onion as a proper news source again. This argument seems pretty preposterous.

Sorry but maybe Apple and Android don't care about BlackBerry because it's going under. Nobody wants to hang out with a loser and that's what they've become. His whining doesn't help.

I'm sure turning around BlackBerry is a monumental task but I feel like he should be focused on innovating and leading and let his PR team do the writing for public statements.

Wow, that's a horrible headline. Did anyone actually read the letter? His position is far less extreme. All hes essentially advocating for is open protocols so that popular services aren't locked down to a single platform. It's an interesting question whether government should mandate interoperability.

That's not what he says:

  Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and
  use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or 
  Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging 
  service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier 
  neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers
  by refusing to make its streaming movie service available 
  to them.

His phrasing is clumsy because hes not a programmer. The issue is that its rather "impossible" to create BB apps for some services because they're locked down. If NetFlix and Apple were to open the API, that would be enough for anyone (including BB employees) to create the app themselves. I don't think BB is so poor that they couldn't hire a few devs to get the apps written.

Netflix and Apple don't have to open up anything if they don't want to. It's their service and ultimately they can choose which platforms to support. This is just whining from BlackBerry.

>It's their service and ultimately they can choose which platforms to support.

I think you're thoroughly confused. A documented protocol can be implemented on any general purpose platform.

Remember the binary document formats from Microsoft? People had to reverse engineer that shit once upon a time. Not anymore, its all XML now. Microsoft didn't have to "support" Linux. They merely had to document their format. Certainly, OOXML has its own problems but these days almost ANY service/application can read/write MS document formats.

What are you going on about? Apple and Netflix offer a service, not a protocol that should be used by everyone. They decide which platform to support — this isn't about any protocol.

So his position seems to be that either these services should provide native clients for these platforms, or else they should expose APIs to let third-party developers create native clients.

That's still not a position I'm comfortable with. (I wish everybody exposed APIs to third-party clients, but I understand how hard that can be.) On the other hand, it's a lot more reasonable than unconditionally forcing devs to port their apps over.

Well, his actual letter doesn't mention the phrase "API," so reading such a request into it seems like a stretch: http://blogs.blackberry.com/2015/01/blackberry-net-neutralit...

I did read the letter and his position is extreme: the BBC captured it accurately.

Anytime you write a letter to Congress that includes the phrase "must be mandated" -- as Blackberry's CEO did -- it's abundantly clear you're asking for a new law.

Now, I admit the question of whether or not this particular proposed law is extreme or not is a judgment call, but forcing programmers (at gunpoint?) to develop for other platforms seems a bit extreme to me. Also not a recipe for very good code. :)

Initially my reaction was the same as the herd, however on reflection I see that he's trying to address a problem in the mobile space.

Really the mobile phone market is currently a duopoly and that's bad for consumers. We are now getting past the initial innovation part of the curve and starting to see level growth in terms of the number of devices in the market place and platform changes.

What we need to start thinking about is perhaps a standard on which Apps are built. Right now its like the 90s where you'd build a site for IE and one for Netscape.

If someone was foolish enough to still own BBRY, I think this incident should be evidence enough to get out while you can. What an incredibly stupid thing for a CEO to say.

I'm in favour of competition, but this sounds like "Music industry should be forced to release cassette tapes"

BB was ahead of the curve, had its glory days, dropped the ball on not focusing on enterprise and now it is struggling to find its place.

I do think we need a 3rd big player in this market (other than apple/google). Feels like innovation has became a battle of thinness / big screens.

Microsoft is a big player in terms of resources, though not market share (2%?) in smart phones.

Based on their Windows 10 announcement yesterday, they are pushing universal device integration, which should help them in the enterprise market. If they deliver, what they'll have is a full stack of productivity, line-of-business, and analytics platforms through a unified UI for any device. Most enterprises already run Windows and if mobile/tablet integration is seamless with a Microsoft platform, that should be a large gain in market share.

The two big questions are if they can deliver well on the promise, and if they can leverage enterprise adoption to increase their consumer market share.

WhatsApp only supporting Google Chrome for their web client is silly. Should they be allowed to look silly? Yes.

What Mr. Chen claims as "discrimination" or non-net neutrality is not that at all. Net neutrality is not about making apps available for all platforms.

On a side note, has anyone developed a BB app? Maybe he should start there first.

Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8927539

Wow. Ignorant or wilfully stupid?

We might as well argue that Blackberry be forced to run a common OS.

Like Android.. haha. Seriously this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read that was not a April Fools Joke.

So would their position be different if they were still the market leader?

Well, time to stop supporting BlackBerry.

forcing != free market

lol, no.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com