BlackBerry is interesting again. The company has finally given in to the mobile OS duopoly and is gearing up to launch its first-ever Android device, the BlackBerry Priv. A change like this is huge for the company, and, naturally, there are a lot of questions about what an Android phone means for the future of BlackBerry. The company's CEO, John Chen, was recently interviewed at Vox's "Code Mobile" conference. There is no video of the interview yet, so all of our quotes come from The Verge's liveblog of the event.
Chen was, of course, asked about the future of BlackBerry and what the company's first Android phone means for the company. "Android in enterprise is a very underserved space," he said. "With our connection, our accounts, our know-how, it has expanded our servable market. I love BB10 and I win in the very high-end there. But the very high-end is not big. In order to make money in the handset business, I need to expand that pie."
Saying that the switch to Android is about selling phones is also a bit of an admission that most of the public doesn't want a device with the BlackBerry OS. That's a pretty obvious thing to say about an operating system with a 0.3% market share but still good to hear from the CEO.
Blackberry is still the preferred device in Washington DC and the political class, and seems popular in finance, too.
(Score: 1) by ghost on Saturday October 10 2015, @02:14PM
On a more serious note, yeah, some people have a hard on for their physical keyboards. Selling a locked-downable, indestructible, android phone with a physical keyboard sounds like their only winning move.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday October 10 2015, @02:51PM
One that can be locked down, but is also a rootable, raw Android device with guaranteed upgrades would be a great thing to see. Most of the people I know, admittedly from a tech background in many cases, are always looking for something like this. Add a big battery rather than trying to make it paper-thin would also win you some users, business or otherwise.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 10 2015, @02:38PM
What does an OS matter? The users will not care about the OS. Running Android and writing java (yuck!) programs will open their system to many more hacks.
And they may not have the resources to stay on the latest version of the OS (with a new version coming out every week) and then supporting and updating every version for the rest of time.
What about applications? Will current Android application be ported to Blackberry, or re-written? Applications already written for Android may not work on BB because BB has to avoid security issues.
BB may be under pressure from CIA/NSA to use Android (which they have pwned beyond all hope) so these criminals and voyeurs can keep an eye on everyone. It seems currently the users of BB are relatively safe from these criminals, so they want to outlaw BB.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday October 10 2015, @09:14PM
Yikes man. BB already runs java programs via the android runtime. Some could argue that they have been working on converting BB to android for a long time. BB users are not more safe from three letter agencies than android users are. Google it and you'll find out that Snowden even released documents about it.
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(Score: 1) by boris on Saturday October 10 2015, @02:42PM
The only way they'll succeed is if this phone is really solid both in features and reliability. As an android user who is getting a little sick and tired of Samsung breaking their stuff... I'm looking for a new flagship phone. I'm an example of someone they could pick up as a customer if they do Android right. Not interested in a physical keyboard though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 10 2015, @02:52PM
I don't know. Is it possible to do android right? I think that ship has sailed. (note, i don't like windows or ios either)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 10 2015, @03:01PM
Can Android be done right? Well, I don't claim to know for sure, but I think it can be done right. There really aren't all that many pure Androids out there. To me, "pure" Android would be like Linux on the desktop, or on the server. You can download any distro you like, to a minimal install, or a full desktop environment install, then you can start customizing. Build your own kernel? Tweak your kernel? Add applications, or uninstall applications? All Android installations should have root enabled, and accessible by the end user.
Any system that is locked down, with root available only to the vendor can't really be *nix, or Android.
Give me root, or give me death. Oh - wait a second on that death bit. On second thought, I just won't buy your product if I can't have root access.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by seeprime on Saturday October 10 2015, @02:56PM
I'd really like to see a new low end Blackberry phone to even consider trying the platform as it is today. 10 years ago it was a real PITA to work with.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by danomac on Saturday October 10 2015, @09:13PM
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday October 12 2015, @11:22PM
They stopped using the right-side scroll wheel ages ago, so your complaint is invalid.
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday October 10 2015, @03:41PM
Using BB10 for security is akin to taking shelter at an air-force base during a missile strike. Every third world country with a hint of a tech budget is targeting BB10 offensively while there's hardly any efforts at defending it outside the work done by a few dozens of Blackberry's developers.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday October 10 2015, @03:54PM
Hey, if anyone from BlackBerry reads this, call Barnes and Noble first and see how their overpriced commodity Android tablet with "value added" crap no one wants (like magazines) is selling. Hint: They can't give it away. This holiday season is going to be a bloodbath, especially since the new models jacked up the price for the specs of an iPad Mini which is a device people actually want.
As a business strategy, this is going to be a total loss for B&N or BB or anyone else who tries it. BB would be better off doing what HP is doing and becoming a services company and getting rid of hardware. (But BB doesn't have anything to spin off like HP did.)
To show you how little value the Nook has, BN shopped the brand around more than once and no one wanted to use the "Nook" brand, and tried to spin it off into a separate company (to get rid of it and have another entity take the loss when it failed) and that didn't happen either.
Full disclosure: I am certifiably insane because I develop Android apps. When BB first announced the ability to run Android apps on their devices, I was excited because I could support their platform with the same code base. BB screwed this up as royally as anyone could possibly do it. Their process for building and running Android apps was incomprehensible. I never figured it out. Their BB emulator was unusable. I never figured it out. BB has already alienated Android developers with their impossible porting process which never made any sense to me. So, to get apps in their devices, BB has to open up to Google Play. But that's exactly what B&N had to do, and it didn't help them any. How do you differentiate your hardware from the bazillion other Android devices which are all cheaper? About all BB can do is become a security software company and dump hardware. Maybe they can rename the company CyberBerry?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 10 2015, @04:38PM
Indeed, I had a first-gen Nook and I have a Nook Glo and they're great. But, the products have been getting fewer and fewer features as time goes on. The replacement for the Glo doesn't even have a micro-SD slot. And they have poor support for foreign languages. Chinese books that they sell are completely worthless as the characters have been rendered in a fixed size that's absolutely tiny.
Then you get the nuttiness of how the Nook books are being handled since they were spun off.
My next ebook reader will probably be a Kobo, they seem to have the right idea. There's a nice selection of readers and they have more than just English for the dictionary. It's a shame how far B&N has fallen, the Nook was the best option at the time, but now, not so much.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday October 10 2015, @06:48PM
The last Nook before it got Samsunged was a decent little tablet. I liked it. The Samsung Nooks are just commodity tablets with crapware. The new Nook that just got announced has good specs, on a par with the iPad Mini, but amazingly costs more. Sure, I can see B&N going for the upscale market, people with enough money that they throw away money buying full-price items in B&N's stores, but Apple already has the high-end market, and there's not a higher-end market of people who want to throw away more money. If this market existed, they would buy the iPad Pro, not a Nook.
BlackBerry ought to learn from B&N, kind of like a real-time Harvard Business Review case study, because it looks like BB is going down the same path of trying to compete in the commodity consumer device space. BB would be a lot better off becoming a software company. Let Foxcon and Samsung make the tablets.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday October 10 2015, @05:37PM
Or, just do hardware and do it *really well*. Hardware that will run stock Android, CyanogenMod, etc. Something that is open enough that you can get updates without relying on a carrier. I avoid Samsung phones because of their ridiculous "theming". The early version of their watches only connected to Samsung phones (I think they're better now). We don't need another Apple. Computer technology has advanced this fast because of *openness*, not proprietary crap that tries to ensure that you won't be competing on a level playing field.