[scrabble]

There were a few key parts to this (and lots more that I'm missing).

1] OS felt dated. Failure to come closer to what customers wanted on a timely basis.

2] Poor app developer experience.

3] A lot of different hardware specs against which to develop apps.

4] Not enough apps. Missing key apps.

5] Slow to innovate after settling on major patent case. The company became very lawyer focused which slowed innovation to a crawl.

I'm sure I'm missing tons of stuff and this would be a great case study, but as a former employee this is coming from my perspective.

[thrownaway2424]

2) Was one of the biggest. I went to their first-ever developer conferences in San Jose and the very few people who bothered to show up, who were most internal IT-type people from big BlackBerry users like Morgan and Merrill, were in open revolt about how shitty the APIs were, how easy it was to develop a nice-looking application for the iPhone, and how appalling the new touchscreen handset was.

Keep in mind this was in the very early days of iOS when they had almost no features and their APIs were a mess. RIM still had advantages over iOS back then, but they didn't have either the user or developer experience to exploit them.

[canistr]

I would add culture to that whereby executive leadership and downward did not admit to problems and felt the platform was infallible. As a graduate of Waterloo, I can attest that between 2008-2011 people in the KW area were steadfast in denying the future of mobile and the underlying problems at RIM/BlackBerry.

[jusben1369]

I would agree with you. In a former life I had interactions with BB in a sales capacity. I sold into or had customers at many of the Top 50 "tech" companies. BB/Rim had one of the strangest, most insular cultures I came across. Maybe early on they felt really patronized by US/SV VC's/companies etc and so were anti US. Either way it was quite odd. I really wondered how that would end up working out for them.

[canistr]

It's hard to really put a finger on whether it's a part of being Canadian or whether particular businesses and corporations are constantly in search a state of denial. For the longest time, Microsoft was in the state of denial about their competition and refused to admit they were/are far behind them.

But on the other hand, you have Silicon Valley culture that tends to fuel adoption and promotion of products/startups in the Valley. So I feel as though while it's true that RIM/BlackBerry was for some time judged unfairly by Americans and Wall Street.

[jusben1369]

Yes. In general when I sold to Canadian companies one had to tread differently vs US companies. There is an inherent sort of reserve for US companies. Yet RIM went well beyond that (just one person's experience though)

[JTon]

6] It became cool to bash BB (severe brand degradation). BB10 is competitive, but the average consumer doesn't know this and doesn't care

[bostonvaulter2]

Yeah everyone I've met in the last few years has felt a need to pre-emptively justify their choice of smart phone to me. I guess they get ragged on a lot by their friends for having an outdated phone.