BlackBerry: All cracked up

The BlackBerry Classic remains unavailable  despite months of promotion, and different signs of BlackBerry's troubles persist

The BlackBerry Classic is meant to be the smartphone that saves the sinking mobile company. though a similar was same of the BlackBerry Z10 and also the BlackBerry Q10 in 2013, those devices finished up failing. however the corporate claims the new Classic is completely different, marrying the beloved BlackBerry daring style with the trendy BlackBerry ten package.

BlackBerry has been previewing and promoting the Classic for months, started taking pre-orders in mid-November, and even handed  out review units to chose members of the press. however you cannot really purchase one within the u.  s. despite the secure Gregorian calendar month unharness date. Here we have a tendency to square measure in Feb, and also the BlackBerry Classic remains a no-show.

Verizon sells the previous BlackBerry Q10, Z10, and Z30 models additionally because the ancient BlackBerry daring 9930 model, that runs the obsolete BlackBerry seven OS. AT&T and Sprint sell solely the previous Q10, and U.S. Cellular sells the traditional Curve 9350, once more blackberry bush seven. i can not notice the Classic or Passport within the uk (once a BlackBerry stronghold), though they are obtainable for pre-order at sites like Carphone Warehouse.


BlackBerry is legendary for misjudging its unharness schedules, with most merchandise shipping well when their secure dates. this might be a lot of of a similar. In fact, a spokesperson told American state in the week that AT&T handiness for the Classic is "soon" and Verizon handiness are going to be by Gregorian calendar month ("in the primary half").

Signs of bother at BlackBerry

On the opposite hand, the inconvenience of those much-hyped devices may indicate that BlackBerry is in worse form than it's lease on. Certainly, there square measure different signs that BlackBerry's turnaround effort underneath chief executive officer John Chen goes nowhere:

•    Alec Saunders, once the vice chairman of developer relations Associate in Nursingd in brief an govt (for a 3rd stint) at the net of things-focused QNX division, left BlackBerry in Gregorian calendar month and in the week proclaimed he is rejoining Microsoft in its new-ventures cluster. Saunders was one in every of the adults at BlackBerry, thus his departure isn't excellent news.

•    Chen's freaky letter to Congress last month speech that competitors like Apple ought to be forced to unharness their apps and services for the BlackBerry very created American state wonder: Has it very come back to needing the govt to force app manufacturers to support BlackBerry? Was this a sop to AT&T's efforts to undermine internet neutrality by trivializing it, in hopes of obtaining AT&T to sell new BlackBerry models? Or was it a PR stunt gone awfully wrong? regardless of the cause, you may feel even the pro-BlackBerry pundits flip against Chen that day.

•    BlackBerry's investors apparently wish the corporate oversubscribed, as they doubt a turnaround can work, reports the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper. Recent (and denied) rumors that Samsung wished to shop for BlackBerry could have come back from those investors, United Nations agency maybe hope that Samsung's freaky collaboration with BlackBerry would possibly give Associate in Nursing exit strategy.
BlackBerry Classic and Passport did not remove darkness from reviewers

The reviewers United Nations agency received prerelease BlackBerry Classic units haven't very likable it, career it a nicely engineered device whose time has long gone with a confused OS attempting to be each the previous BlackBerry and also the new one. The Verge's Dieter Bohn was unaffected, for instance, and also the review by Congress of Industrial Organizations.com's Al nihilist started sky-high however finished unsuccessful. (To be truthful, Cnet's nameless reviewer was kinder.)

The square-screen Passport model, that was the large center for BlackBerry last summer, likewise got poor to middling notices from the few reviewers (such because the Verge's Dan Seifert) United Nations agency received prerelease loaners from BlackBerry.

Ironically, the reviews of the Classic and Passport smartphones echoed considerably those of the BlackBerry Q10 from eighteen months earlier. the problem remains: despite however nice the hardware is also, the BlackBerry's keyboard orientation and small-screen style play a poor combination these days. it is a downside with the paradigm, not the merchandise model.

In 2013, BlackBerry hoped its all-touchscreen BlackBerry Z10 would lead its users into the trendy smartphone era. My review shared that hope, however by then the iPhone and automaton were too so much entrenched with nice devices, and that they offered Associate in Nursing app choice BlackBerry could not (and still can't) bit. The larger BlackBerry Z30 that debuted in late 2013 conjointly went obscurity. Meanwhile, the iPhone has more improved.

The BES disengagement isn't any pushover

With its smartphones going obscurity and its QNX division's Internet-of-things potential each restricted and long-run, BlackBerry has one different space it will leverage: device security. Its BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) twelve mobile device management (MDM) server handles iOS and automaton, not solely BlackBerry units; in theory, it may become the dominant MDM platform.

Even that will not be easy: Enterprises that care concerning mobile management have already invested with Brobdingnagian sums in MDM servers from the likes of Citrix Systems, sensible Technology, MobileIron, and VMware, that manage everything however BlackBerrys. It's onerous to examine those firms moving their iOS, Android, and Windows Phone users to BES. however it is easy to examine those firms closing down BES once the BlackBerry pool gets too tiny to keep up.

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