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posted by janrinok on Thursday March 05 2015, @12:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the still-in-there-fighting dept.

Blackberry appears to be expanding its services into third-party mobile devices:

A little over a year ago the company launched BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for Android and iOS. Now the company is adding new features including support for BBM notifications on Android Wear smartwatches.

But BBM might just be the start of BlackBerry’s cross-platform offerings. This week the company unveiled something called the BlackBerry Experience Suite which could bring more apps and services to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone devices in the future.

The Experience Suite has three components: the Productivity Suite, Communication and Collaboration Suite, and Security Suite. BlackBerry says users will be able to purchase all three of those packs together or buy just the individual suites they want.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Leebert on Thursday March 05 2015, @01:21PM

    by Leebert (3511) on Thursday March 05 2015, @01:21PM (#153485)

    I recently got my 9930 replaced with a Q10. The new hardware, along with the BlackBerry 10 OS, has killed so many of the features that made the BlackBerry attractive to me for my work phone, I'll probably drop it altogether on the next refresh cycle.

    A couple of examples:

    • BlackBerry phones are aware of when they're "holstered", and you used to be able to set various alert profiles based on whether or not the phone was holstered. That was great for me, because I could set the phone to vibrate for everything when it was in the holster, and audible when it's out of the holster (generally meaning that it was charging on my nightstand or on a desk).
    • They did away with several of the more useful physical buttons (including the trackpad). The most valuable use case that was eliminated for me was the ability to double-click the BlackBerry button to mute/unmute the phone. I listened in on a lot of conference calls while driving, and having a physical button to handle mute made things much easier to do safely.
    • Along those same lines, BlackBerry 10 pushed a new gesture-based interface. Which, at least in my experience, ends up requiring a whole lot more manipulation to do what I could previously do by pressing a few physical buttons.

    Overall, the sense that I've gotten with BlackBerry is that they've caught the ever-expanding "Apple Me-Too" disease. In their rush to try to be Apple, they've killed off many of the features that were attractive to the few people who still used their devices. Don't get me wrong, I don't really complain about new features and re-thinking things, but you don't kill off attractive "signature" product features in the process.

    I'm no business expert, but I do know that I haven't heard anyone say: "Wow, these new BlackBerry phones are awesome, I'm going to trade in my (iPhone|Android) and get one of them!" What I HAVE heard people say is: "Well, they done gone and ruined what was left that attracted me to the BlackBerry, I guess I might as well get an (iPhone|Android) now".

    Anyway, maybe they'll succeed in their attempt to focus on app development on other platforms, but I really doubt it. The barrier to entry there is pretty darn low. Not any idiot can manufacture a complicated physical artifact, but any idiot can develop mobile apps. (Yes, I recognize that it's a BIT more complicated than that, but I'm talking rough magnitude of barriers to entry.)

    (N.B.: I am notoriously bad at predicting things in the mobile phone industry. My biggest claim to fame was loudly decrying how mind-numbingly stupid it was to put a camera in a phone, so take my opinion for what it's worth. :) )

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:03PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:03PM (#153494) Journal

      The biggest mistake was to put smartphones into the hands of social zombies ;)

      • (Score: 2) by Leebert on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:14PM

        by Leebert (3511) on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:14PM (#153498)

        I'll try to not take that personally. :)

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:52PM

          by kaszz (4211) on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:52PM (#153513) Journal

          My point was that "in the old days". Entrance to the information highway required a minimum level of competence and thinking and curiosity. This served as an indirect filter such that predominately people that had something qualitative to say were the only one present. Nowadays we have all the rest to contend with too. Facebook seems to be the center of this universe.

          So perhaps it's time to produce tools and devices that doesn't cater to the "mind-numbingly stupid" but rather to demands like the ones you wrote about to facilitate efficient use instead of making it easy to use for everybody. And content that focus on quality rather than accessibility for everybody.

          Adding a camera was much a symptom on catering to the bling crowd and a came to think of the NSA nickname for iPhone users ;) Your points rather show you are power user that has demands on your tools. Nothing negative ;)

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:42PM

      by GungnirSniper (1671) on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:42PM (#153511) Journal

      What I HAVE heard people say is: "Well, they done gone and ruined what was left that attracted me to the BlackBerry, I guess I might as well get an (iPhone|Android) now".

      BlackBerry has been listening to the it's-not-blackberry-enough criticism and addressed much of that in the BlackBerry Classic [mashable.com] which was previously called the Q20. The Q10 came out over a year and a half ago.

      As a fan of the Bold and my Galaxy S3, I'd be very happy to have a mix of the two. BlackBerry's keyboard and buttons (volume, mute, etc) with Android's platform would be amazing. Ultimately I think it will come down to apps, and BlackBerry will be forced into the role of a premium and perhaps more secure Android device maker.

      • (Score: 2) by Leebert on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:56PM

        by Leebert (3511) on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:56PM (#153517)

        Ahhh, nice to see. Now all I need to do is figure out how to get my organization to pay for an upgrade to an upgrade they just paid for. I don't see that happening, but it's worth a try.

      • (Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:40PM

        by Snow (1601) on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:40PM (#153644) Journal

        Blackberry already runs Android apps.

        You can download them through the Amazon store, or if they are not there, from some .APK depots that exist around the web.

      • (Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:48PM

        by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:48PM (#153646)

        Well, BB couldn't have botched run-Android-apps-on-BB-OS any worse than they did. They created such a difficult process that even someone like me who wanted to do it gave up. If they had simply made it easy to get your Android apps running on BB OS, they'd have been much better off. Instead, they had this terrible virtual machine emulator thing I never got to work, and a crazy app signing and approval process that made me give up. My time was better spent doing anything else than dealing with their mess. So, yeah, if they'd just run stock Android and throw some of their software on it, they'd be much better off than what they've got now.

        --
        (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)