Blackberry (Commentary)

Update 2020-02-23: Blackberry has survived, a gaunt shadow of its former self. Meanwhile, what the Playbook should have been has appeared. The  Surface tablet (now in its 7th iteration), does everything that I expected the Playbook to do, and more besides. Smartphones exceed Playbook's capability, too. Many kinds of tablets, some better and some worse than an iPad, clutter the shelves. The iPad has been hugely improved, but Appple has not yet made it an true alternative to its notebooks and laptops. The latest high-end Windows and Android tablets are also phones. They have sufficient connectivity, wired and wireless, that they can function as desktops when hooked up to real keyboards and monitors.We're only a step or two away from a single, OS-neutral device that can do anything, either natively or via links to other devices.

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Blackberry, formerly RIM, has tanked. On Friday 27 September 2013, its stock was selling under $8. Its sales of the new phones are well below expectations. People just don’t want Blackberrys any more.

Why?

Thinking back to introduction of the Playbook may provide a few clues. At the time, the iPad was cool, but for many people the cool factor wasn’t enough to justify an extra $100 or $200. When I heard that RIM would offer a tablet, I expected something new and better than an iPad. More power. An OS that would run 3rd party programs. More connectivity. A better camera. But mostly,  I expected the tablet to be a phone.

I think that Blackberry didn’t realise is that there’s a non-Apple market out there. A market that wants something more versatile than an iPad. Apple’s products have always been very good at what they do, but they’ve also always done very little for the price. So, what we got was a slightly better iPad that synced to a Blackberry phone.

What drives the tablet market is the dream of a single device that will do everything. Hence the huge number of “apps” available from the Apple store, and now also available “for your Android device”. Most of these apps merely link to websites, but many do real work, and of course there are lots of games.

Since Blackberry didn’t have the time or expertise to develop a slew of apps, it really had only two doable tasks:
     One, develop “apps” for the basics, such as web surfing and email. This could have been done by buying and improving a couple of available products.
     Two, build the OS so that the user could install any 3rd party program or app that they wanted. A Linux-based OS with a Windows virtual machine would have worked well for this.

And of course, make the tablet a phone, too. To do this comfortably would require a device with a 5" to 6" screen. The latest Superphones with 4.5" screens are creeping up to that size. The mini-iPad is approaching it from the other end. I think we’ll end up with tablet phones. Or maybe we’ll end up with Skype and texting as the preferred phone modes, which will make a 9 to 10 inch screen just right.

There were voices that expressed a wish for a small, powerful tablet that could be used as a phone. Mine was one of them. But I guess these desires were too blue-sky for Blackberry. Or else they were so focussed on beating Apple at its own game that they didn’t have enough attention left over to think about alternatives. Pity. Blackberry could have taken the tablet-phone a leap or two ahead of the competition.

2013-09-20