Should BlackBerry continue to bother with handsets?
To be honest. No, I don't think that they should.
In my opinion BlackBerry blew their chance at reclaiming any relevance in the (already none too profitable) handset market when they confusingly released the Z10 ahead of the Q10 AND made the Q10 more expensive. I said it then, and will repeat it now, the Q series with the physical keyboards were the ones which the loyal fans wanted, and with full screen touchscreens being more expensive everywhere else (for the logical reasons that touchscreens are the most expensive part) people also expected them to be cheaper than the Z series phones. So fans were left waiting for the device they truly wanted and were then punished for waiting with high prices.
I don't know they managed to screw that up so massively. None of their decisions made sense under that CEO though. They also held off on a cross platform version of BBM until well after the point where they were basically forced to give it away to be competitive.
And, as stated above, hardware is really only a lucrative business for a few OEM's. Most struggle. It isn't a market you should want to be in if you can avoid it anyway. But, they don't seem to be getting the message there.
So where does that leave BlackBerry? I think they should either abandon hardware entirely, or mostly abandon hardware and release a single device with their signature keyboard and try to drive the price as far down as possible. With a single "true", affordable BB device, they might be able to turn a profit on hardware. But, by and large what I think they should be doing is working with other OEMs to enable BBOS as an alternate OS on existing hardware.
Microsoft has not yet secured the #3 spot so solidly that it couldn't be taken from them. If BB took cues from the things OEMs complain about in WP and addressed those in their own OS and then either licensed or gave away the OS they could get people back on their platform.
What I would still love to see is a quick and easy means of loading up your choice of phone OS on your device. Microsoft appears to be making some headway with this. It would be a lot easier as a consumer to either buy a phone pre-loaded with Windows or BBOS if they knew they could easily switch to Android if they didn't like it. Similarly, a user on an Android would be more likely to give Windows Phone or BlackBerry OS a try if it didn't mean buying a new handset.
These are the sorts of arrangements I'm not seeing widely yet. But if they happened would probably be a great catalyst for change in the mobile industry. And, it isn't like every device need be supported. If it were just the flagship phones from each OEM, that would be sufficient.
Regardless, with their current share of the market, they really need to be thinking about infiltrating the market in a less direct way than via handset sales. The OS approach is ideal because it would mean that they could potentially increase market share without investing a dollar in hardware. If the OS takes off, then the time is right to produce 1st party handsets. Getting their OS on competing hardware isn't the only tactic available though. But it is harder to gain consumer mind share with standalone apps, and even harder to keep competitors from creating better knock offs.
In my opinion BlackBerry blew their chance at reclaiming any relevance in the (already none too profitable) handset market when they confusingly released the Z10 ahead of the Q10 AND made the Q10 more expensive. I said it then, and will repeat it now, the Q series with the physical keyboards were the ones which the loyal fans wanted, and with full screen touchscreens being more expensive everywhere else (for the logical reasons that touchscreens are the most expensive part) people also expected them to be cheaper than the Z series phones. So fans were left waiting for the device they truly wanted and were then punished for waiting with high prices.
I don't know they managed to screw that up so massively. None of their decisions made sense under that CEO though. They also held off on a cross platform version of BBM until well after the point where they were basically forced to give it away to be competitive.
And, as stated above, hardware is really only a lucrative business for a few OEM's. Most struggle. It isn't a market you should want to be in if you can avoid it anyway. But, they don't seem to be getting the message there.
So where does that leave BlackBerry? I think they should either abandon hardware entirely, or mostly abandon hardware and release a single device with their signature keyboard and try to drive the price as far down as possible. With a single "true", affordable BB device, they might be able to turn a profit on hardware. But, by and large what I think they should be doing is working with other OEMs to enable BBOS as an alternate OS on existing hardware.
Microsoft has not yet secured the #3 spot so solidly that it couldn't be taken from them. If BB took cues from the things OEMs complain about in WP and addressed those in their own OS and then either licensed or gave away the OS they could get people back on their platform.
What I would still love to see is a quick and easy means of loading up your choice of phone OS on your device. Microsoft appears to be making some headway with this. It would be a lot easier as a consumer to either buy a phone pre-loaded with Windows or BBOS if they knew they could easily switch to Android if they didn't like it. Similarly, a user on an Android would be more likely to give Windows Phone or BlackBerry OS a try if it didn't mean buying a new handset.
These are the sorts of arrangements I'm not seeing widely yet. But if they happened would probably be a great catalyst for change in the mobile industry. And, it isn't like every device need be supported. If it were just the flagship phones from each OEM, that would be sufficient.
Regardless, with their current share of the market, they really need to be thinking about infiltrating the market in a less direct way than via handset sales. The OS approach is ideal because it would mean that they could potentially increase market share without investing a dollar in hardware. If the OS takes off, then the time is right to produce 1st party handsets. Getting their OS on competing hardware isn't the only tactic available though. But it is harder to gain consumer mind share with standalone apps, and even harder to keep competitors from creating better knock offs.
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