BlackBerry shocks again, and Facebook losing the teen market.
I laughed today. But for once because something I had not predicted happened. BlackBerry gave up on selling and is instead taking $1B in loans and replacing their CEO.
Unfortunately for the new guy, the prior CEO really seems to have gone out of his way to ruin things in advance of the new guy showing up. The new guy, John Chen, I believe the name was, mentioned trying monetize BBM. This did make me laugh, because I have literally been saying this for well over a year now. But at this point, under Thorsten Heins they released the app for FREE on iOS and Android already.
So, to monetize, you either need to renege and make the app a paid app for future users which will surely cause a back lash, or build ads into an app which didn't have them and which will also likely trigger a back lash (though admittedly less of one).
I'm still completely and utterly confused why they didn't charge for it. Even $1 would have been sufficient. 20 MILLION PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY DOWNLOADED THE APP! If the app were a paid app those numbers would undoubtedly be lower. But honestly, if the price were right, probably not by much. I just don't get how under Heins they felt that consumers would value their hardware so highly and their software so low? Or at least, I have to think that is the mindset based on their actions.
Anyway, they have basically pissed away the consumer market. Releasing the Z10 before the Q10 and charging more for the Q10 than the Z10 buried any hopes they had in the hardware market (which I think were slim to begin with). Not to mention the absurd delays which didn't help. Then, the one iconic piece of software they did have in the consumer sphere they gave away for free to the users of the 2 largest app ecosystems out there.
I guess they have enterprise cred. But without a viable platform? I don't think so. I could be wrong. But I thought that all of their enterprise software was based around their BlackBerry OS. If their devices aren't selling I don't see how they will establish an enterprise presence. Most of the useful types of enterprise softwares tend to be proprietary and baked into the OS, in part as a means of increased security. They would need a partner with a viable platform to get something like that off the ground. And I stress again that Android is too mature of a market place to get a foothold in and Apple isn't likely to let BlackBerry that deep into their OS. In fact, where the company is today, even Microsoft would probably laugh at them.
And, as such, while I felt selling the company was dumb, I feel todays news is too little too late. I don't like harp on one person, and I can't even be sure how much directly is his fault, but BlackBerry appeared to have gotten screwed the second Thorsten Heins took over. And, for the companies sake, you have to hope it was ALL his fault. Otherwise, others who helped to Titanic that company may still be there, which wouldn't bode well for the future either.
Which leads me to my next story. Because this one is actually loosely related to BlackBerry. The news tonight on TV pointed out that Facebook has finally acknowledged that teen usage is down. And, in the interviews, they all said exactly the same things I said about why iOS and Android WILL die off one day. People don't want to use what their parents used. It is an old out-dated tool. Kids invariably want to take their own path. By the time my daughter is a teen I'll wager Twitter, Vine, Instagram and Pinterest will either be dead as well, or dying off slowly.
The only company so far that seems to have bucked the trend is Google. But, I think their longevity stems largely from what is seen as a reinvention. Look back before Android and people didn't really think of Google as a company. Google was a website. And people didn't (and many people still don't) really understand the concept of a web site. I don't think people tended to regard Google as company until Android. And in that respect, Google is younger even than iOS. Apple only really became a consumer brand when the iPod came out. So I would put them at a few years older than Google despite the fact that the company has been around much longer.
And you can see now that Apple is slowly becoming tomorrows Microsoft. The iPod was Windows 95, it broke the ice and got the Apple brand into a large enough number of hands that people were talking about it. The iPhone was Windows 98, the product which truly made them a product a household name and then the iPad was their Windows XP. More people I know own iPads than iPhones and iPods combined and for a few years, iPads own the tablet market the way Windows dominated the PC market prior to that. The iPad Air I suspect will become the Windows Vista/7 (perhaps not in terms of the rage induced by Vista).
Now Google is slowly taking over what Apple and Microsoft paved the way for. But the younger consumers of today who are almost exclusively Android users thanks to the cheap devices will very shortly be mother and fathers. And their kids will struggle to distance themselves from that brand as well.
Unfortunately for the new guy, the prior CEO really seems to have gone out of his way to ruin things in advance of the new guy showing up. The new guy, John Chen, I believe the name was, mentioned trying monetize BBM. This did make me laugh, because I have literally been saying this for well over a year now. But at this point, under Thorsten Heins they released the app for FREE on iOS and Android already.
So, to monetize, you either need to renege and make the app a paid app for future users which will surely cause a back lash, or build ads into an app which didn't have them and which will also likely trigger a back lash (though admittedly less of one).
I'm still completely and utterly confused why they didn't charge for it. Even $1 would have been sufficient. 20 MILLION PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY DOWNLOADED THE APP! If the app were a paid app those numbers would undoubtedly be lower. But honestly, if the price were right, probably not by much. I just don't get how under Heins they felt that consumers would value their hardware so highly and their software so low? Or at least, I have to think that is the mindset based on their actions.
Anyway, they have basically pissed away the consumer market. Releasing the Z10 before the Q10 and charging more for the Q10 than the Z10 buried any hopes they had in the hardware market (which I think were slim to begin with). Not to mention the absurd delays which didn't help. Then, the one iconic piece of software they did have in the consumer sphere they gave away for free to the users of the 2 largest app ecosystems out there.
I guess they have enterprise cred. But without a viable platform? I don't think so. I could be wrong. But I thought that all of their enterprise software was based around their BlackBerry OS. If their devices aren't selling I don't see how they will establish an enterprise presence. Most of the useful types of enterprise softwares tend to be proprietary and baked into the OS, in part as a means of increased security. They would need a partner with a viable platform to get something like that off the ground. And I stress again that Android is too mature of a market place to get a foothold in and Apple isn't likely to let BlackBerry that deep into their OS. In fact, where the company is today, even Microsoft would probably laugh at them.
And, as such, while I felt selling the company was dumb, I feel todays news is too little too late. I don't like harp on one person, and I can't even be sure how much directly is his fault, but BlackBerry appeared to have gotten screwed the second Thorsten Heins took over. And, for the companies sake, you have to hope it was ALL his fault. Otherwise, others who helped to Titanic that company may still be there, which wouldn't bode well for the future either.
Which leads me to my next story. Because this one is actually loosely related to BlackBerry. The news tonight on TV pointed out that Facebook has finally acknowledged that teen usage is down. And, in the interviews, they all said exactly the same things I said about why iOS and Android WILL die off one day. People don't want to use what their parents used. It is an old out-dated tool. Kids invariably want to take their own path. By the time my daughter is a teen I'll wager Twitter, Vine, Instagram and Pinterest will either be dead as well, or dying off slowly.
The only company so far that seems to have bucked the trend is Google. But, I think their longevity stems largely from what is seen as a reinvention. Look back before Android and people didn't really think of Google as a company. Google was a website. And people didn't (and many people still don't) really understand the concept of a web site. I don't think people tended to regard Google as company until Android. And in that respect, Google is younger even than iOS. Apple only really became a consumer brand when the iPod came out. So I would put them at a few years older than Google despite the fact that the company has been around much longer.
And you can see now that Apple is slowly becoming tomorrows Microsoft. The iPod was Windows 95, it broke the ice and got the Apple brand into a large enough number of hands that people were talking about it. The iPhone was Windows 98, the product which truly made them a product a household name and then the iPad was their Windows XP. More people I know own iPads than iPhones and iPods combined and for a few years, iPads own the tablet market the way Windows dominated the PC market prior to that. The iPad Air I suspect will become the Windows Vista/7 (perhaps not in terms of the rage induced by Vista).
Now Google is slowly taking over what Apple and Microsoft paved the way for. But the younger consumers of today who are almost exclusively Android users thanks to the cheap devices will very shortly be mother and fathers. And their kids will struggle to distance themselves from that brand as well.
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