Among the topics discussed, why John Chen took the CEO job at BlackBerry, how the company has progressed since his arrival, the NSA and his plans for the future of BlackBerry. Even if you’ve heard some of the information before, it’s still an interesting and deeper look into the man now in charge of BlackBerry.
I could have been a BlackBerry customer. I tried to buy a Passport in Canada a few weeks ago, but nobody wanted to sell me one. Every shop I went into carried them, but when I waved my credit card in front of the salespeople and told them they didn’t even have to convince me to give them 700-800 Canadian dollars, they told me they were not allowed to sell me Passports off-contract. They are only allowed to sell Passports on-contract and locked.
As a Dutch guy waving 700-800 dollars around, this continues to baffle me to this day.
Buy it direct?
http://store.shopblackberry.com/store/bbrryus/en_CA/pd/productID.30…
Shopping direct may not work for the following reasons
1) Credit Card not issued by a Canadian/USA Bank
2) Shipping address not in Canada/USA.
3) Credit Card billing address not in Canada/USA.
I’ve often wanted to buy ‘stuff’ during my frequent trips to the US or Canada.
Very few companies will ship to an address that is a Hotel and even less with one of those funny foreign cards.
So you are left with two options.
1) find a retail outlet and buy off the shelf
2) give the required greenbacks to someone you can trust and get them to order the item and have it shipped to their address. Then you only have to hope that you are still in the country when it arives.(Don’t choose the ship via UPS or USPS options)
I ran into a similar problem when I considered buying BlackBlerry. When the Q and Z series phones came out, I looked at getting them. However, they were hard to find. My carrier only carries the Z10 (no keyboard) and the Q5. (They didn’t carry the Q10 at all.) Oddly enough, though the -5 models were supposed to be cheaper, my carrier had a huge mark-up on them, making them much more expensive than the -10 models.
The combination of having poor inventory and poor deals/pricing of BB meant I ended up going with the slightly less appealing (technologically) Android phone.
I would be so happy to ditch Android if either BlackBerry or Ubuntu could convenience my carrier to carry their phones at a price that made sense.
Edit: On the suggestion of the poster above me, I went to the BB store. Their site currently tells me they have no Q10 models and the Q5 is way over priced for its hardware compared to similar Android phones available in this region.
Edited 2014-12-06 02:17 UTC
Same happened to me. The answer from the sales-guy that “this phones are not for sell” left me speechless. He not had to add “on-contract”, he not did, I not had to ask, contracts are not an option here. Its just not for sell, move on.
BB had the only devices in the whole shop no prices pinned on them, not for sell. All other devices have prices pinned on them, for sell. No exception. WTF? I am not surprised they fail hard to sell if not for sell but I am surprised they keep on doing that. Anyhow, I picked another Android cause this are for sell.
Edited 2014-12-06 10:04 UTC
Sound like Nokia in the US 10 to 15 years ago. They either refused to sell Nokia, or only sold crappy ones. Who did Blackberry piss off?
Edited 2014-12-06 11:52 UTC
Judging by some people’s experience here, maybe someone somewhere wants to start ditching it and so have passed down orders to stop selling it?
grr blackberry…. yawn.
I have not to this date seen a Blackberry on display in any phone shop in Denmark. Not 5 years ago, not now. Why is that?
The reason you didn’t see any 5 years ago is that back then BB was an enterprise product, which is the nice way of saying “only corporate IT is stupid enough to buy our product”.
The reason you don’t see any now is because BB is a minority player.
Yep. Just personal observation but I see more Windows Phone than BlackBerry these days.
Here in the uk (the ticket should be cheaper to get here) very few stores have them in stock. You can order them online easily enough either direct or via Amazon. Just and Fyi, Amazon uk does deliver overseas
I checked the Q10 in store then I bought it sim-free and discounted online.
I live in the UK.
(when it was first released it wasn’t that easy to find though, even here)
I was on a Q10 for the past 10 months, and took advantage when the Z30 went on sale at $299 earlier this month (long story involving me needing a taller resolution to run certain Android Apps).
Once the Black Friday sale went into effect (Passport for $499), I returned the Z30 (still awaiting refund) and ordered the Passport. Now I’ve been using the Passport for three days, and it is an amazing device. The build quality is top-notch compared to any phone I have had. It fills the void between phone and tablet quite nicely, and the Android runtime is mature enough that I can run all of my banking apps and Firefox + extensions (https everywhere, adblock) with no problem.
Stores are still reluctant to carry them because the first batch of BlackBerry 10 devices did not sell well, through a combination of buggy software (BB10 is matching up well with early versions of OSX in terms of being released too early but stabilizing later on), very poor marketing, and negative connotation with the word BlackBerry. A year ago, BlackBerry couldn’t even find a buyer. Today, they are rejecting bids for purchase.
My recommendation: keep trying to get one. Through eBay, Amazon, wherever. There were enough sold on Black Friday sale that people will be selling them for profit at current BlackBerry price.
It sounds like they have the right CEO at Blackberry to help them move forward and it sounds as though Blackberry have made a bit of a turnaround over the last year.
The North American market works in ways that seem strange to us from the UK or Europe, so your experience doesn’t surprise me. However, you don’t have to look that far. It’s available online in the Netherlands via expansys.nl:
http://www.expansys.nl/blackberry-passport-qwerty-black-266526/
Why not get it off Amazon? Not sure how much it would be to ship overseas. But given the Euro is stronger than the dollar I don’t think it’ll matter too much.
http://www.amazon.com/BlackBerry-Passport-Factory-Unlocked-Smartpho…
Just verify that it supports the correct GSM bands and you should be good to go
The interview gave clues but didn’t go in dept enough. Here is my take on BB’s future http://www.bigthinkingapplied.com/will-blackberry-ever-be-iconic-ag…