PCWorld Forums: Paving The Way To Abandon Blackberry - PCWorld Forums

Post your comments for Paving the Way to Abandon BlackBerry here

I just purchased a Galaxy Nexus to replace my BlackBerry. I think it's time to abandon the RIM ship.

I would love to see BlackBerry Survive! I wouldnt trade in my BB Bold for nothing!

moodyharvey, on 30 June 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

That's great cause that's about what folks are willing to trade for a Blackberry... Nothing...

I'm in the mobile space, looking after traditionally conservative Enterpise customers. The mumblings of worry about RIM are increasing, although I think most will hold out to see what happens with Win8 before committing to dropping BlackBerry after 10+ years of running/integrating it.

If Win8 proves to be Beta/Unstable/Unusable, then that'll buy RIM some more time. But I can't really see the mass exodus predicted by some. Even if RIM goes under, someone's going to pay a lot of money for that captive business market on BES.

The exception, I think, is if Win8 can deliver seamless, secure integration from phone to server through tablet, laptop, and desktop. That potentially makes the BES concept surplus to requirements.

I also get to deal with RIM on a daily basis, and despite the woes there's a lot of decent, positive, people working hard to right the ship again. However, I do think that they're proving the maxim that 'nice guys come last'.

DuncanHamilton, on 01 July 2012 - 11:02 AM, said:

It's unfortunate what's happening to RIMM. You have a huge base of users that love your product, and even call it Crackberry. So you're doing what your customers are telling you they like. One day someone else pushes the industry forward, quickly, and at that time you have to decide if what that company is doing endangers your business or not. RIMM felt it wasn't a threat and they are of course wrong about that. This should be taught in business schools. Don't underestimate your competitors.

HankRearden, on 01 July 2012 - 11:18 AM, said:

Or 'when in front, look behind'

They'd become so good at being in the corporate space, and making their hardware and services do exactly what IT Managers wanted it to do in the name of Policy and Security that they failed entirely to notice the Consumerisation/BYOD/Apple juggernaut thundering up behind them. Even more unfortunate is that they failed to realise they'd been run over by said juggernaut until well after the event, by which time they were well and truly squished.

The server outage just added to their woes, then they followed that up with the panicked early release of the PlayBook which must eventually go down as one of the biggest fumbled passes in corporate history; technically superb device, excellent work companion to the BlackBerry phones for corporate users, and a huge captive and loyal customer base.

Credit to them on delaying the launch, as it's a clear reversal of the their recent habit of premature launches, and given where they're at took big balls. But it does mean that if and when BB10 does arrive it has to be absolutely perfect, and I rather suspect that the market will have moved on again by then.

Still, as I said, there's a lot of very big firms who don't/won't move off BlackBerry quickly, which will give them a buffer, and there's much that can change in the market which will favour them. BYOD trend losing steam being a primary one; it'll only take one high profile corporate security catastrophe to check the rate of ascendency of iOS/Android.

DuncanHamilton, on 01 July 2012 - 03:09 PM, said:

I remember before Jobs went back to Apple, they made much less revenue than RIMM makes today. And for a while they were selling just 1.97% of the PCs sold world wide. And they came back to become the largest most profitable company in America. I can be done. Companies have turned worse situations into gold. Personally I don't think RIMM has the right management to do such a turn around. I would however say that they have one of the key ingredients for a turn around. That key ingredient a loyal customer base. There are plenty of people whom love their Blackberry.

Seriously, just about 2 months ago I bought a Blackberry curve again. Just for old times. I bought it at Virgin and thought I'd set it up and see if I would like to go back to that OS. I was blown away by how poor it was compared to my current experience with Android and iOS. With the first and 2nd iPhone I was in such pain with the quality of those iPhones that I did go back to Blackberry. But not this time. I'd say the iPhone with it's Siri and reminders, notes, email and so on pretty much has all the features, and better that had me on Blackberry. Android is close to that quality now. Getting there quickly.

I have read several stories featured in PCWorld and other sites which point out the results of of surveys, which claim to track the intent of future sales. And not so good for RIMM, much of their customers plan to switch to Android.