Ian Austen has an interesting interview in the NYT with the Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, authors of "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry," that offers details about the emotional and business turmoil surrounding the collapse of the once-dominant smartphone maker's fall into near market obscurity. Most interesting is BlackBerry's initial reaction to the iPhone. "It was an interesting contrast to the team at Google, which was working on smartphones at the time. Google seemed to realize immediately that the world had changed and scrapped its keyboard plans. At BlackBerry, they sort of dismissed the need to do anything about it in the short term," says McNish. "One thing that they misunderstood is how the game had changed when AT&T announced its deal with Apple," added Silcoff. "BlackBerry had built its whole business model on offering carriers products that worked efficiently on their networks. The first thing Mike Lazaridis said when he saw an iPhone at home is that this will never work, the network can't sustain it. What they misunderstood is that the consumer demand would make carriers invest in their networks."
"One of the big reveals for us in the book was the enormous power wielded by carriers in the smartphone race," says McNish. "In the wake of Apple's ascendency, carriers have seen their clout and economic value significantly diminished as customers spend more of their smartphone money on Apple phones, apps and other content than they do on carrier bills. It is one of the greatest wealth transfers in our generation."
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday May 29 2015, @05:34AM
the app store as a whole has a billion, yes, but very few individual apps reach that many potential customers.
Working Software grossed $3M one year that I was there. The largest drop that I know about was 250,000 pieces.
Consider that our business model worked really well for us, in that we earned much of our money by renting our list to our direct competitors. They rented their list too. While we depended on Apple to sell Macintoshes, we didn't have to ask Apple for permission to sell our products to end-users.
We also had unlimited free technical support. How many app store apps earn enough to pay for that?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]