The obligatory Blackberry thread

MaxBurn

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The swirling has started:

RIM: We are not withdrawing from consumer market
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/45108/blackberry-not-pulling-out-of-consumer-market

BlackBerry maker to focus on business customers (Update)
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-rim-ceo.html

Bailouts
Following the poor results, Jim Balsillie, former Co-CEO, has resigned as a director on the company’s board. In addition, David Yach, the company's CTO, is also stepping down after 13 years, while Jim Rowan, COO, Global Operations, has decided to pursue other interests.
 

MaxBurn

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Mercutio

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RIM announced its new products today. I doubt anyone cares. I don't know anyone still using a BB. They can go sit in the Corner of Irrelevance next to Nokia. Apparently they're really proud of their new video camera capabilities, which would probably have been awesome and interesting in about 2008.
 

CityK

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RIM announced its new products today.
Funny thing about that -- right now they are advertising quite heavily on TV with a commercial (which is an abbreviated version of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9qhO9ZLbtk&) that quips about writing a 1000 emails a day and try doing that with a touchscreen ... which leads me to the point that their new device is.... a touchscreen! LOL, way-ta-stay consistent RIM !

I doubt anyone cares. I don't know anyone still using a BB. They can go sit in the Corner of Irrelevance next to Nokia
I know a number of people using a BB. They certainly put themselves up against some big hurdles, but I wouldn't be so quick to count them out for good just yet.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Someone who is typing 1000 e-mails a day on a phone is definitely using the wrong tool for the job regardless of the phone they've chosen.
 

MaxBurn

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I agree. I'm behind on mobile news lately due to my work but with the phones in circulation for developers there should be some news coming out.
 

time

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Someone who is typing 1000 emails a day should do their organization a favor and quit.
 

Mercutio

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I have individual customers who might very well send me 50 or 60 messages a day, all one sentence long at most and devoid of definite nouns so that I have even the least idea what they're writing about. Given those habits I guess I could see SOMEONE doing that.

Someone I would wish a shameful, painful death upon.
 

MaxBurn

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Yes, email is not instant messenger.

Still it seems not everyone was enthusiastic about the new software announcement.
RIM stock price falls to eight-year low following BlackBerry 10*reveal
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/3/29...eight-year-low-following-blackberry-10-reveal

There is typically a dip after an announcement because some of the mystery seems to have gone away, but any new record-breaking lows for rim can't be good.
 

MaxBurn

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OK this is another fun one. Senario: I want to send a picture message to someone to make sure MMS is working on their device. I don't care what the picture is so I will use one on the phone.

Go into messages, I want to reply
fubby1.png


Attach a picture
fubby2.png


Select walpaper
fubby3.png


Select one
fubby4.png


Select one
fubby6.png


Hit menu
fubby7.png


Now what?? There is no way to do something with that picture! Bonus points if you know whats wrong, because it sure took me a few minutes to figure it out from this dead end menu tree.

Sorry about the quality there is some horrible moire going on there and I didn't want to play around with the AF lock.
 

MaxBurn

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No one figured out my puzzler?


--------------------------------------------------


Surprising no one I presume?

ACSI release
http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?op...81:press-release-may-2012&catid=14&Itemid=357

For many users, the advent of smartphone technology has dramatically changed what they look for in a cell phone device.

~

RIM (Blackberry) lags behind as the least satisfying at 69.

“Companies with weak customer satisfaction often have weak stock performance,” notes Fornell. “RIM’s sales are slumping amid a bevy of problems, from hardware and software issues to server lapses that have caused email and messaging outages. Over the past year, share price for RIM has virtually collapsed.”
 

Stereodude

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I have one that's company provided (for work). I use it for making calls and reading my e-mail with occasionally sending an e-mail or text. I have put no effort into customize it or download apps or anything. The only thing I've done to it is install Google maps.
 

MaxBurn

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Over one Billion in inventory

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ith-1-billion-inventory-corporate-canada.html

The value of RIM’s in-house supplies grew 18 percent last quarter alone, a faster rate than at any other company in the industry, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“Clearly this stuff isn’t selling,” said Monga, who maintains a buy recommendation on RIM’s stock in anticipation of the company being sold. “Despite all the writedowns they’re taking on the inventory, these inventory levels are not dropping.”

The value of the company’s inventory climbed to $1.03 billion last quarter, up from $618 million a year earlier. Back in mid-2008, when the BlackBerry was still a hot seller and RIM’s stock traded at an all-time high of $147.55, the figure was less than $500 million.
The inventory tally measures the cost of the phones and tablets stored in RIM warehouses around the world. It doesn’t include the additional stock of devices held by retailers and carriers.
 

Mercutio

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It's worth pointing out that RIM had already stated that it wants to simplify its manufacturing and logistics chain.
Though, with a billion dollars in inventory on hand, it sounds like it could simplify way, way more.

Did anyone else catch this little tidbit on the Galaxy SIII? AES encrypted mail, VPN client and support for hundreds of IT management policies? Who does that sound like?
 

timwhit

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My prediction is that Microsoft will buy Nokia. I have no idea who is going to buy RIM. Maybe some patent troll.
 

Chewy509

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But Facebook is in the complete opposite market? (Getting their own users to give them personal information so that FB can on sell it to the highest bidder).

HP seems like a better fit...
 

Handruin

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But Facebook is in the complete opposite market? (Getting their own users to give them personal information so that FB can on sell it to the highest bidder).

HP seems like a better fit...

Makes sense. HP buys companies and IP and then does nothing with them. I thought there was rumors of facebook producing their own mobile phone. There are also the same rumors of Amazon producing a mobile device. I don't know if they're looking to acquire an entire company for it though.
 

Mercutio

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My thinking is that Facebook has been rumored to want its own handset for a while, and RIM has its goofy messaging network with mega-millions of users.O
Other than that, HP has WebOS already, Lenovo already does Android. Dell just exited the handheld market. Microsoft owns a chunk of Nokia and just made a huge investment in Nook. Sony has a bad case of "not born in Japan" with regard to pretty much everything. Yahoo or AOL at one time might've been mentioned just because they're big content providers. Oracle or CA are probably big enough and already have the proven ability to take good ideas and kill them with poisonous internal practices, but neither of them seems to want to be in the hardware business.

And those guys are pretty much the usual suspects for general-purpose computer/internet/software things.

In the meantime, Facebook has so much money right now that they're handing out billion dollar checks to app developers with 10 employees and trying to develop some kind of justifiable P/E ratio. I see a fit.
 

MaxBurn

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I can see them killing all hardware devices and making a nice little business with secure communications. Unfortunately this would really require work with all the manufacturers to make a truly trusted platform that is secure. So on the one hand they suck at the hardware and many software OS aspects but on the other they need that for a trusted and secure device.

It is just sad to see the mismanagement lead to so many job losses but it certainly isn't a unique story.
 

MaxBurn

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One thing that's been annoying me forever about this phone is every time I go into email the scroll position is exactly where I left it so if I left it three days ago I have to scroll up through three days worth of email. There is no quick scroll to top unless I am completely missing something.

On the upside it appears that they have fixed the servers so that when I mark email read on the computer it will mark read now on the phone. For the longest time that was not true.
 

Mercutio

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They have to respond that way for their enterprise customers and investors. Otherwise they're not being good stewards of the good ship RIM and their asses will get canned. Which, granted, probably beats going down with the ship.
 

LunarMist

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One thing that's been annoying me forever about this phone is every time I go into email the scroll position is exactly where I left it so if I left it three days ago I have to scroll up through three days worth of email. There is no quick scroll to top unless I am completely missing something.

IIRC it was T or U that moved the focus to the most recent message. Of course it's been a while since they confiscated the blackberries.
 

MaxBurn

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IIRC it was T or U that moved the focus to the most recent message. Of course it's been a while since they confiscated the blackberries.

Thanks so much! Been using this thing for something like six years and I never knew that. Appears T is top and U has something to do with unread messages. Don't know why it doesn't just go to the top of the mailbox when you open it like everything else does. I did know about the R for reply and L for reply all when reading an email. None of these appear in menus anywhere either.
 
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