I find it funny how in other threads everyone is complaining that the CEO shouldn't be paid millions of dollars because "the CEO doesn't do anything". But in the case everyone seems to agree that "the CEOs ran it into the ground"...well, which is it?

The Angry Hand of God:
How in the hell do you have the market cornered in the corporate environment like they did, and completely lose everything in a matter of a couple years?

One word, flame inducing, answer: iPhone (I'd except LG Parada as well).

TL;DR answer: Blackberry were both caught out by the rise of and ignored the consumer smartphone market until it was too late. They never considered that a consumer unit can be retrofitted and inserted in to corporate shops far easier than they could retrofit consumer features to their corporate designed gear. That massive shift in the consumer arena caught a lot of big names out, including Microsoft, however a lot of the other companies had substantial war chests to keep them afloat whilst they rebrand or were consumed by larger organisations (Nokia becoming 'Microsoft mobile telephone hardware division' as a rough example of that).

They also failed to factor in the raw hatred of things like BES/BIS that IT admins carry around. When we got the slightest chance to jump ship we took it. Even if it meant more headaches in the short term it was better than BES/BIS.

Blackberry's best bet would of been to get MS to buy them, however they didn't die quickly enough so MS brought Nokia instead. At that point they became farked. Completely and utterly farked.

internutthead: RexTalionis: Confabulat: Blackberries remind me of first-generation Windows phones. The world has moved on.

Corporate inertia has a way of keeping technologies alive long past its use-by date. Heck, until Microsoft forcibly made people update Internet Explorer, a lot of computers in corporate places still ran Internet Explorer 6 as their primary browser.

....and don't even get me started about Government users. Remember when there was a patient troll case against RIM and the US Government basically said that even if the troll won the Government would continue using Blackberry?

They won't change for shiat. Government users are probably one of the things still keeping RIM alive.

That isn't because of inertia, but because of security. Basically, RIM has closed secure networks that business and government loves, so they've stuck with them for a long time.

Since last year, IIRC, rim has been developing software so that business/government can use different non-RIM phones with the network, which means that they can break their popular secure network service away from their failing phone business, so expect to see a lot of companies who've been sticking with blackberries start to move to other versions of phones, but staying with the same network.

oblig