It’s going to be a rough month for what was once one of the most successful smartphone companies in the world. Between all the Android and iOS violence, it’s easy to forget there’s this Canadian company which was still growing its userbase every month. However, it’s expected the company will lose subscribers for the very first time.
I’ve never known what to make of BlackBerry. I always saw it as that brand of phones American people bought while us Europeans were busy using Nokias. The crazy thing is that I started to see more and more of my fellow countrymen buy BlackBerry devices after the arrival of the iPhone. Suddenly, RIM started advertising in The Netherlands for one of their full-touch devices – even though the only BlackBerry devices people appeared to be buying here were the more traditional ones with keyboards.
It soon became clear that much like Nokia, RIM would become another victim of the iOS-Android one-two punch that completely changed the mobile phone landscape within a few years. Like Nokia, they had no answer, and like Nokia, it took them way too long to realise they needed an answer in the first place. And again, like Nokia, recovery isn’t yet in sight, and even if it comes, hinges on a mostly untested operating system (Windows Phone 8 is a very different animal from 7 – NT vs. CE – and let’s face it, even WP7 is effectively untested compared to iOS and Android).
However, despite the doom and gloom, RIM was still profiting from the rising popularity of the smartphone – its subscriber base has never stopped growing these past few years. And now, even that last glimmer of positive news will vanish – according to “analysts”, sure, but even if they’re off by a quarter, it’s still pretty significant.
“This is the first quarter we are expecting zero subscriber growth – a loss in enterprise [customers] offset by a small gain in international consumer subs,” Kris Thompson of National Bank Financial told The Globe And Mail, “Starting next quarter, we see the sub base in a downward spiral with Blackberry 10 potentially slowing [the losses], but we’re not holding our breath.”
BlackBerry 10 is supposed to bring the entire company around. If it fails, the company will most likely change from a device maker to strictly a software/services company, or it might even be sold altogether (they’re most likely packing like crazy in the patent department). This, in my view, also explains the delays: the company knows full well there won’t be any second chances here. The first few BB10 devices – preferably even the first, period – need to be a slam dunk. A home run. A Left 4 Dead 2 campaign on expert with zero restarts, no deaths, and only 250 total damage taken (yes I’m very proud of that).
They’ve got the base operating system down. We’re looking at QNX here, and as far as base operating systems for mobile devices go, you can’t get much more optimised than that. Due to its embedded nature, it’s probably a hell of a lot more efficient than either Linux, Darwin, or NT. Userland, however, is a different matter – and you can have the most efficient and most awesome base operating system, but if your userland sucks, you’re not going to get anywhere.
As a geek, I’m hoping RIM is delaying to get the userland just right. We need another good competitor in this market, as iOS and Android are boring the living daylights out of me. I like Windows Phone, and would love a fourth player to achive success. RIM, don’t ship until you’re ready. Don’t give in to pressure. You’ll be able to take a few quarters of losing subscribers.
If susbribers are down, it mainly means corporate customers got sucked into coolness and laissez-faire from security stand-point.
Or maybe they’re just fed up with RIM’s rip-off plans.
Security what? There’s no security on a smartphone.
But BlackBerry encrypts as much as it can, it is unmatched as far as I know, that was my point… Leaving blackberry is no good news from security standpoint. If this is a trend… you imagine.
My sibling works at the DoD & Pentagon. They are allowed modified Android phones with extra security software and strict protocols and Blackberry phones only. Despite the desire to hop on the Apple bandwagon, iPhones are not allowed for usage.
That security?
http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/13/iphone-security-encryption-law-enforc…
Seriously, do you Apple fanatics even read the articles that you post in defense?
Read it carefully again. It does not say that the DOJ, LEO, or other security government professionals use the iPhone or even recommend it to their employees for work.
This article, however, backs up my original post:
http://www.muktware.com/news/3145/android-approved-pentagon-dod-usa…
Nothing has changed as of yet with these policies.
An article from December last year, suggesting you use Dell phones running Android 2.2? Well, have fun with that.
I think the truth is more that governments have trouble peeking in an iPhone than an Android one. Your own users are the biggest security risks and you don’t want them to use devices you can’t get access to.
You claim “They are allowed modified Android phones“, while in reality it is only one model phone, an obscure Dell phone. It is only allowed after it received its modification. This says nothing about iPhone security.
They took an Android phone because it’s easy to modify and add their own backdoors to it. So if you’re fond of privacy and security never ever use a phone given to you by a government agency.
Specifications are constantly updated. Obviously you know nothing of how government and military work with regards to technology. They are slow to implement and use ‘outdated’ tech by current pop standards.
Please don’t kid yourself that iPhones are the height of security. Your second sentence is one important aspect of a ‘secure’ phone for corporate or government use.
Again, one illustrative article but not where it stands almost a year later. I won’t do the research for you on this one. Get out of your bubble and do it yourself, if you are truly interested.
Again, seriously? If you work for a government agency, you have no choice. Period. That is different than private phone security, but I think you know that, right?
So in summary:
* You say you posted an outdated article, although Wikipedia still claims the Dell Venue is the only allowed phone.
* What you claim and what the government does doesn’t say anything about iPhone (or any other phone, including Android ones) security.
* Government issued phones don’t offer the user any personal security or privacy advantages, only disadvantages.
I conclude it was another piece of anti-Apple FUD once again based on very dodgy logic and strange assumptions.
Wikipedia, that bastion of peer-reviewed scholarly research?
Security is one of the selling points of RIM Blackberries. Government agencies know a hell of a lot more about ‘security’ than you.
Irrelevant. This point was already dismissed by another user.
Again, though this apparently has to be repeated ad nauseum with regards to anything ‘negative’ concerning Apple these days, I have used Apple products since the 1970’s. In the last ten years, things have dramatically changed with them both corporately and with those who pyschologically ‘love’ them. Deal with it.
I really wish that were true, but typically governments attract:
1/ high paid consultants that don’t really give a shit whether their solution works as they wont be supporting it once their job is done, and
2/ underpaid permanent staff who aren’t bright enough to work in the private sector, let alone consult.
Obviously this is a huge generalisation, but I dismay at the way how IT is handled in government projects.
For all we know, Wikipedia was probably written based off that article.
You’re getting carried away with yourself now. You didn’t even know about the Dell phones until today, much less know details about their security. So to make the claims you’re now, you’d have to based them on 100% pure bias and paranoia.
anti-apple or not. You can’t then take an even more extreme view point with completely made up facts about a handset you’ve never seen and its intentions to spy on you to your employers. That’s taking FUD to a whole new level!
Somewhere in this discussion there’s a sane middle ground, but I fear we’re beyond ever reaching it.
That’s because nobody was discussing iPhone security until you jumped in
That’s likely part of the reason. But the article did list a number of other specific reasons why iPhones weren’t used.
If you were that paranoid that the government are watching you, then you wouldn’t be applying for jobs in the DOJ to begin with :p
The fact is, everyone is watching and logging your activities. Google, Apple, your ISP, the web servers you connect to, your telecoms company every time you make a call, your bank every time you make a transaction….everyone. We only enjoy relative anonymity due to the scale of the data collected (aka security through obscurity), but don’t think governments nor private entities (if just via civil lawsuits) couldn’t access a wealth of data against you should they decide to single you out.
I reacted to:
Despite the desire to hop on the Apple bandwagon, iPhones are not allowed for usage.
That security?
So it was not I that brought up the iPhone.
All smart phones are tracked in some or multiple ways. The goverment wants to track it their way, so they modified a Dell Venue. This motivates someone, somehow, that iPhones are not secure.
Yes, I brought up iPhones because currently they are the ‘cool’ phones that every one from corporate to academia to government agencies want to use in place of more secure and frankly better & cheaper products.
Funny that a single negative mention of anything Apple set you off on a tirade to defend them as if it was a personal attack on yourself. Psychologically, this is akin to religious beliefs and fundamentalism.
http://www.psfk.com/2011/05/secrets-of-the-superbrands-how-apple-pr…
As I pointed out before, I neither ‘love’ nor ‘hate’ any brand – Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Google, etc. I recognize the good and the bad. I will level criticism when deserved at all, and if there is praise, I will give that as well. I personally have not found much reason to give praise for Apple’s corporate behavior in the last decade. Again, deal with it.
A tirade? From me? I posted a single link, which wasn’t a tirade either, and didn’t add any personal comment to it.
Yes, BlackBerries are secure too, that’s why governments don’t like them. They don’t like iPhones or Android phones that haven’t been prepared by them.
It has nothing to do with which device has good, the best or the worst security. A government wants a phone they can get access to if the user forgets his password or doesn’t want them to. Using an Android phone, being Open Source, they can create a favorable situations without needing the help of RIM, Apple or anyone else.
Any other reason is just filler. If you have their data they always want to be able to control it.
Including backdoors should make these phones less secure even. If the goverment cannuse them hackers can exploit them.
Ahh sorry yes. My mistake.
To be honest I didn’t think his post was arguing that iPhones were less secure and Android. Just that the government haven’t reacted to employees pressure to support iOS just yet.
Having worked for the government in the past, I’ve seen first hand how glacial things move. Often with superior technology inexplicitly passed over.
I think you’re drawing several false conclusions there. Mainly the assumption that the Dell phones are modified to make it easier for the government to snoop. That’s just plain silly as there’s a whole plethora of strict checks that applicants have to pass before they’re employed in positions like the DOJ. The security on the Dell phones would almost certainly be preventing data getting lost.
Plus the government doesn’t need to hack Android to snoop anyway: employees e-mails would be sent via their mail servers anyway and any phone conversation can easily be tapped.
I can understand a healthy distrust when it comes to matter of security, but I think you’re boarding on tin-hats with your Dell allegations. As I said before, having worked in IT for the government in the past (albeit the British gov) and have actively worked on projects regarding securing confidential data and it’s distribution. So the official reports on the DOJ Dell’s seem reasonable to me based on the experience and i’ve had projects I’ve worked on.
There is nothing unreasonable about DOJ and their Dell phones, I just object against the notion that because they use an Android based phone Android’s security is top notch and the iPhone’s thus isn’t.
I recently spoke with my Dell account manager and he told me they didn’t sell any tablets or phones anymore and when they did even he told customers not to buy them, because they were that bad. But apparently they sell them in the U.S.
Considering no one buys these phones when you do see someone using one (s)he statistically has a high probability of being an important government type.
That’s fine. I don’t have a problem with that. I objected with the bit where you accuse the government of only engineering bespoke phones so they can spy on their employees. That claim is completely baseless.
You’re comparing apples to oranges there as the DOJ phones aren’t the same handsets as the consumer devices.
True, but there’s far easier ways to find out if someone is an important government type than trying to extrapolate the statistical probability based on their preferred mobile phone.
I can understand why the point you’re making about Apple. But you’re over compensating by spreading FUD about a Dell handset you’ve never seen – much less have any idea about.
I’m not spreading FUD, because that would make no sense regarding government issued Dell phones. It’s not like you can buy these yourself.
We know one fact: government Dell phones are modified security wise.
From this you can make some logical assumptions:
* They want to be able to get to the data on it
* They want to know where it is in case nobody does (like when someone goes missing, loses his phone or if it’s stolen)
* They want to remote lock or wipe it
* What you can install on it is probably restricted
And there is nothing weird, strange or creepy about this. You can do this also with BlackBerries and iPhones, but the government wants to totally control this process and not want to be unable to wipe an iPhone because Apple is upgrading its servers. Nor do they want RIM, Apple or anyone else to have any data which hackers can get access to. They want to secure stuff themselves.
Except that government do use BBs. And that wasn’t your original point; you were harping on about big brother watching over it’s employees.
Getting to the crux of the argument:
Have you not thought that the only reason they don’t support iOS might be because they’re just /that/ far behind on current tech?
Or maybe it’s because Android / Dell and RIM offer cheaper deals than Apple?
All this talk about x supports y and is better than z because (and again, calling on my experience with working on IT projects for the government), govs are cheap skates who will opt for budget solutions without any foresight about how much more expensive those solutions might turn out in the long run. They’re also epically slow at adopting the latest technology.
Though criticisms aside, once you factor in the number of employees in question, it might still work out cheaper building a bespoke Android handset that costs ~£250 per user than buying an “off the shelf” iPhone which could cost them twice that.
Either way, we’re both just speculating and assuming.
My original point was that iPhone security wasn’t bad, just because the U.S. uses Dell Android phone.
Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough, of course the government isn’t watching its employees all day, but they want the possibility to do so if necessary.
RIM already had a secure system, remote lock ‘n’ wipe, so no wonder they are used. Android is open source, so it’s easy to strike a deal with Dell to get a large supply of phones with discount and modify the operating system.
This is not so easy to do with the iPhone as they’d need Apple. And as you mention those phones aren’t so cheap.
Yeah, and having a great time at it!
Let’s also assume Red Dwarf X is great.
Oh wow, looks like the RDF still works fine without Jobs.
Oh wow, that’s some great arguments.
Well, it’s better than some unsourced nonsense (read it: it is) from a click-funded consumer gadget blog.
No, it isn’t.
This is a lie or a government coverup or something.
At least that is what they are saying on Crackberry.
If you read the article, it’s an opinion piece filled with what analysts “think” will happen when RIM announces their numbers at the end of the quarter. Of course, it’s got a nice doom and gloom headline, and everyone’s treating it as fact…
Is someone shorting RIMM stock again?
Disclosure: I work for RIM.
That’s kind of the way the market reacts to widespread analyst forecasts. The article sites a number of analysts at a variety of companies. This isn’t to say that its a guaranteed going to happen kind of thing, but its closer in accuracy to a seasonal weather report than a random guess.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Blackberry; my last phone was the 8320. But I always wanted a phone that was great at email, text, GPS, and web surfing. The iPhone 4 was all that. But … I also want a phone that syncs more naturally to my PC, thus I look forward to WP8 phones like the Nokia lumia 920.
All those comments about security… I would have thought high security areas would ban the use of phones all together…
Simply impossible in this day and age, however, decisions about which ‘phone’ to use is still important. From my contacts it is still Blackberry 1st and modified versions of Android 2nd.
And they are. There are plenty of installations, even in private business, you may not enter with any mobile computing device or cellphone.
But what do you do if you want or need mobile phone capabilities and want to do it as secure as possible? RIM’s BB are a good choice then.
What I find funny are the number of people on here hand wringing regarding the situation at RIM – as if the ‘hype of <insert company here>’ is to blame for the fact that customers themselves are leaving voluntarily – in many cases not always for the market leaders regarding Android smart phones. Talk to anyone regarding Blackberry and there is definitely a silent user base who are fed up with Blackberry but pretty much stuck to it because it was the only thing available at the time. Fast forward to 2012 and Blackberry isn’t the only one on the block, the lock in and lack of competition which kept Blackberry customers glued has come unstuck and now have viable alternatives.
What do they need to do? stop cutting engineering numbers for starters and get Blackberry 10 out on time and make sure that it isn’t as buggy as hell. Secondly, open up the Blackberry messaging network. Thirdly, find a way to separate the two ensure that the service side moves forward rather than stagnating. Fourthly, ensure that Blackberry 10 supports what people need, ActiveSync, IMAP/POP3/CalDAV/CardDAV and so on.
The situation Blackberry is in is due to their own doing and only they have the way to get out of the situation they’re in right now.
RIM has added an extra 2 million subscribers. The RIM share price has increased by 10% to $7.00 since 24 September.
It’s now official: 80M subscribers, cash reserve increased by 100M to 2.3B, despite costs for employee layoffs.
In other words: another BS story on RIM based entirely on speculation. Not that this suprises anyone, this is going on for years, many people want RIM dead but they refuse to die which makes those people even more desperate!
Anyway, RIM will make a comeback, in that I have faith!
The claims in this article have been proven wrong. The headlines/story should be updated to reflect real numbers.