US District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco said that the Canadian mobile phone maker had established a "likelihood" of proving that Typo infringed its patents, while mentioning that Typo had not sufficiently challenged the patents in question.
The preliminary injunction prohibits Typo from the sale of its keyboard, which is a part of the relief sought by Blackberry. Easier to get an injunction on hardware than software, even without the case being proven. ]]>
The survey, which was conducted across a range of financial services organizations and was more expansive than a simple query of MobileIron's existing customer base, found that one-third of financial services companies were completely BlackBerry-free, 41% are in the process of planning or implementing a migration to other mobile platforms, and that slightly more than half (52%) have a team dedicated to migrating from BlackBerry to other platforms. Those numbers show that even the most conservative of organizations are heeding Gartner's call from last fall to plan and start a migration within six months.]]>
This is why I want to make you aware that, right now, we are pursuing legal action against a party who stole confidential information about a future BlackBerry product and made that information public. This person falsely posed as an employee of one of our carrier partners to obtain access to secured networks.
I recognize that, in some cases, the leaks reflect people’s genuine interest in BlackBerry. There are a lot of people whose enthusiasm for our company and our products makes them want to know what we will do next — and that can be a tremendous asset for us as a brand.
But, when curiosity turns to criminality, we must take strong action.]]>
BlackBerry hasn’t shown that its mobile phone sales are driven by the popularity of its keyboards, he told [Judge William] Orrick.
“The Q10 by and large was a failure” and “has literally not sold,” Taillieu said. BlackBerry “hasn’t provided any evidence of nexus between the keyboard and the commercial success of this device,” he said.
Typo didn’t copy the BlackBerry keyboard and is a “grain of sand” compared to BlackBerry’s, he said.
“BlackBerry’s problems are not related to Typo,” Taillieu said. “We don’t believe Typo is the reason for any loss of sales to BlackBerry.” The Q10 failed? Harsh. And it would be pretty easy to find BlackBerry users who bought because of the keyboard. Orrick says he will issue a ruling on whether to block Typo sales "promptly".]]>
On Monday, a spokesperson for BlackBerry confirmed that Don Lindsay, vice president of user experience at the Waterloo, Ont.-based company since 2009, left the firm in December.]]>
…To date, customers have installed nearly 30,000 BES10 commercial and test servers around the world. In France, more than 60 percent of the CAC 40 companies (the 40 companies with the most significant values among the 100 highest market caps on the Paris Bourse) have ordered, downloaded or installed BES10. BlackBerry announces its quarterly results on Friday 20th.]]>
The problem with the "best" customers is that they provide no information about the dominant basis of competition in the industry, i.e. the mainstream market. Blackberry's core user base always held the opinion that their email/messaging services and hardware keyboard gave the company a sustainable competitive advantage over competitors. Unfortunately, while industry watchers were preoccupied with those features, the basis of competition in the mainstream market shifted to ease of use, availability of apps, full featured browsing, etc.]]>
It is BlackBerry's first appearance on the list. BlackBerry is the only Canadian company on the third-annual list, next to 45 US companies. According to Thomson Reuters, BlackBerry's innovation was "driven by a 38% surge in patent filings between 2010 and 2011, and 17% growth in patent filings between 2011 and 2012."
"Now in its third year, the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators study provides further evidence that innovative organizations—those that secure global patent protection for their intellectual property, continue to push the envelope with new technologies and invest more in R&D—are those that outperform the S&P 500 on virtually every measure of business success," noted David Brown, managing director, Thomson Reuters IP Solutions. Up to a point, Lord Copper.]]>
Rogers’ decision not to stock the Z30 touchscreen model, which will become available in Canada on 15 October, comes as a surprise since the Toronto-based wireless and cable company was an early adopter of BlackBerry products. It does sell the Z10, Q10 and Q5. ]]>
Menezes said a full Gartner report with three recommended courses of action will be delivered soon to Gartner clients that use BlackBerry Enterprise Service servers and/or BlackBerry smartphones. Pretty dramatic for an analyst company to say something so baldly. BlackBerry responded that it is "steadfast" in its mission to deliver "the most secure and powerful mobile management solutions and smartphones to our customers".]]>
In the board meeting, Mr. Lazaridis pointed to a BlackBerry with a keyboard. “I get this,” he said. “It’s clearly differentiated.” Then he pointed to a touchscreen phone. “I don’t get this.”
To turn away from a product that had always done well with corporate customers, and focus on selling yet another all-touch smartphone in a market crowded with them, was a huge mistake, Mr. Lazaridis warned his fellow directors. Some of them agreed.
The boardroom confrontation was a telling moment in the downfall of Research In Motion. Heins (and Lazaridis) turned down the idea of BBM going cross-platform in March 2012. Lazaridis gives an interview as part of the article. In short: too slow, and too split between old and new.]]>
This is largely because the market is dominated by two platforms: Android, which is seen as an unsecure malware magnet, and iOS, which comes from a firm that has never learned to spell "IT." In fact, Apple's biggest failures were Lisa and the Apple Server, both created on Steve Jobs' watch (Lisa was even his product, initially) and both targeted at the IT market. The Lisa was released in 1982. There's no record of a product called "Apple Server". And you know about the "huge comeback". Rob Enderle is president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group. ]]>
If the BB10 units grew from 2.8m in the May quarter to 3.3m or higher in the August quarter, there is a chance that BlackBerry might find a willing buyer. 15% or higher QoQ momentum offers a glimmer of hope, even with the big spring volume disappointment…
BlackBerry could be worth a substantial amount even if it is dismantled and sold piecemeal. But the investor mood about patent portfolios has darkened a fair bit since Google bought Motorola.]]>
“It’s one foot on the banana peel, one foot in the grave,” Marshall told Computerworld Australia this week at the AirWatch Connect conference in Melbourne.
BlackBerry’s latest version of its mobile management software, BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 10, supports Apple and Android devices. However, the company has not allowed multiple-OS MDMs like AirWatch to support BlackBerry devices — a move that has essentially forced businesses to buy BES if they want to securely support BlackBerry.
“By not opening up the APIs a year and a half ago with [BlackBerry] OS 10, it was the beginning of the end,” he said. AirWatch is a (highly rated) rival to BlackBerry in MDM, but his point is a strong one: it means enterprises using AirWatch wouldn't buy BB10 phones. (Via @mbrit on Twitter.)]]>
The list at the time consisted of 13 phone vendors who either merged, were liquidated or acquired after this trigger point was reached. There were no examples of vendors who recovered. Since then two more vendors reached the threshold (Nokia and RIM) and a third will do so this quarter (HTC). One vendor (LG) may be recovering but Nokia has just been acquired and RIM has put itself up for sale. Some Japanese vendors like Panasonic have also called it quits since then. So the score so far is about 18 triggers, 15 exits and three pending. Only LG, owned by a bigger conglomerate, has escaped the black hole. It's not promising for HTC or BlackBerry.]]>
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I think the Q10 is monumentally important as a cash cow for BlackBerry over the next year. Signs so far are that's not the case. The scary part though is the end of the post:
If BlackBerry 10 sells north of 5 million per quarter (remember we now have the Z10 and the Q10 selling), I think analysts will be forced to massively raise their numbers.The stock tanked two months later when the quarterly results came out: BlackBerry had shipped 2.7m BB10 phones and made an unexpected loss.]]>And we all know what that means to the stock, don’t we?
The Z10 is now available free on a two-year contract at several outlets such as Best Buy. And BlackBerry has started offering employees the chance to buy up to 10 Z10s, contract-free, for less than $100 each, according to a person familiar with the matter. BlackBerry said it offers its products to employees at special rates.
In Canada, BlackBerry's home turf, the Q10 was expected to sell briskly. But sales appear to have fallen flat there as well.
"I think we'd all say that the Q10, the one we all thought was going to be the savior, just hit the ground and died," an executive at a Canadian carrier said. "It didn't drive the numbers that anybody expected." BlackBerry's current quarter ends on Saturday; it reports results on 27 September.]]>
BlackBerria exhibits all the classic signs of a collapsing country. Today, it’s the kind of place that might compel the State Department to issue a travel advisory. It’s a land where crime goes unpunished, where fires burn unextinguished, where citizens wander the streets alive but dazed, where the future is too foggy to inspire any feeling but despondency.
BlackBerria is officially up for sale, and will be sold from a position of weakness — its suitors will look more like the World Bank than casual bond buyers. The picture illustrating the article is utterly brilliant. And the article itself will have you saying "Oh, yeah, true.."]]>
After disappointing sales of high-end Z10 and Q10, BlackBerry opted to price the Q5 value model above $400. After disappointing sales of the high-end HTC One, HTC opted to price the HTC One Mini at around $500. Samsung has a vibrant low-end range, but it also decided to price the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini at $500.
Taken together, these design and pricing decisions seem wildly optimistic. That there would be no room in the mid-range has been forecast for a couple of years. HTC and BlackBerry might be about to hit hard(er) times.]]>
If BlackBerry’s spring models are now facing the kind of flame-out HTC One is experiencing, the next winter is going to be exceptionally grim for the Canadian vendor.]]>
Over the past several days the A10 has appeared in both picture and video format and seems to be a larger 5-inch smartphone with design similarities to the Z10. A new image has found its way online, this time it’s apparently from a internal presentation and reveals all the important specs. Always assuming you think the specs are what makes the difference. Empirical evidence suggests it's not.]]>
Of course, the underlying problem is that though both platforms are perfectly OK (though with their flaws), they're radically sub-scale. iOS now has about 400m active devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, though obviously with overlapping users) and Android over 800m, plus China. Lumia and BB10 combined have sold a little over 23m units in the last 18 months. As a developer, why would you target these? Developers? Developers? Developers?]]>
The report is based on a tweet from T-Mobile's UK account [tweet since deleted]
According to a source with knowledge of BlackBerry's plans, that date is not correct. In fact, our source called all those stories you may have read "bogus." Except that 27 June is the day before BlackBerry's first-quarter results are announced. It would be a smart day to do it. The deletion of the tweets might mean they're correct.]]>
But there isn't any leadership from Heins in this direction. I get that marketing is complex and it's not a good thing to confuse, but if Heins is talking with authority about the tablet going away, surely it would be a good idea for him and his team to set the tone of that discussion with more clarity. Heins seems to simultaneously understand post-PC (that the desktop stops being the dominant way to do computing) and to not get it (you need more and discrete devices).]]>
It says independent sales figures show it notched up 10% of the market during that period. Kantar ComTech Worldpanel says 5.1%, BlackBerry says GfK says 10% (but won't release the GfK numbers). Going to be hard to pull out of the results, because BlackBerry's quarters don't match calendar quarters.]]>
As you type, common misspellings will be auto-corrected. You can even turn on keyboard predictions, saving you a few keystrokes by showing words on the screen that you might be typing next. A tap on a word adds the word to your sentence. I found I could type faster without using onscreen keyboard predictions, though in some cases I could select predictions for nearly an entire sentence. Battery lasts for days, rear-facing camera is good, browser is fast. Should be a hit at the very least in corporations that have been waiting to upgrade their BB7 devices.]]>
BBM records any usage of the phone's media player and can push these visits and downloads to all messenger contacts, much like a status update. So your grandmother might be notified that you've been listening to the new Justin Timberlake album, or she might know that you have a fetish for, uh, granny porn. Oops.]]>
In the UK, BlackBerry slid from 16.8% of all smartphone sales in the three-month period ending in February last year, to just 5.1% of sales for the same span in 2013. That’s a drop of 11.7 percentage points, during a period that included a full month of BB10 device sales. BlackBerry itself claimed 1 million devices shipped for its most recent fiscal quarter, which included BB10 launches in Canada and the UK, but when pressed about how much of that represented actual sales, execs hedged and noted that it was “sort of” closer to between two-thirds and three-quarters of that 1 million figure on its investor conference call. Note that this is share - of phones shipped - and not installed base. Windows Phone has now overtaken BlackBerry in both the UK and US for shipments. (Thanks @modelportfolio2003 for the link.)]]>
He said BlackBerry was making early strides in encouraging users to switch from other mobile platforms to its own, that a follow up to its commercially unsuccessful PlayBook tablet was a long way off and that developers of big name apps like Instagram and Netflix were being won over by the reaction to its new BlackBerry 10 (BB10) operating system.
“Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market ... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that,” Mr Heins said.
“History repeats itself again I guess ... the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.”
Mr Heins said one area that the new BlackBerry phones had surpassed the iPhone was in the ability to multi-task - running multiple apps at once - meaning that users could work in the same fashion on their smartphone as they liked to on a laptop. We feel fairly sure that the iPhone interface is six years old, at least in its public incarnation.]]>
Secure Work Space will be available before the end of June, and will allow corporate users of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 to handle devices using non-BlackBerry operating systems. The move will encourage business customers to continue to use BlackBerry's services to manage devices on their networks, even if employees use them as both business and as personal devices. Neat idea, but does it signal a retreat, or just a redoubt, from the handset business? It also puts BES up against companies such as Airwatch and Citrix, which offer similar products.]]>
BGR has now learned from multiple trusted sources that BlackBerry has indeed managed to pull off the coup it so desperately needed. Several high-level BlackBerry executives have confirmed internally that half of all BlackBerry Z10 sales in Canada have been made to new customers coming from other platforms.
What’s more, one-third of Z10 sales in the UK, another key market for BlackBerry, have been made to customers who did not already own BlackBerry smartphones. This is slightly at variance with an interview with FierceWireless where the executive vice-president of global sales said that about a third of sales were "from outside the BlackBerry community" and that this figure was "consistent" among the 50 markets where the Z10 was launched.]]>
The one-page policy memo from Public Safety Canada, updated in mid-January, attempts to dissuade government BlackBerry users from sending a PIN-to-PIN message largely because it could be read by any BlackBerry user, anywhere in the world. The messages are “the most vulnerable method of communicating on a BlackBerry,” a Public Safety Canada presentation says…
Political staffers use the device as well, regularly sending PIN-to-PIN messages and emails as government business has progressively migrated to mobile devices.
“Although PIN-to-PIN messages are encrypted, they key used is a global cryptographic ‘key’ that is common to every BlackBerry device all over the world,” the memo reads. “Any BlackBerry device can potentially decrypt all PIN-to-PIN messages sent by any other BlackBerry device.” You wonder whether certain governments have been granted access to that cryptographic key, don't you?]]>
“This is not simply about embracing the newest technology –- it is about keeping the department’s workforce relevant in an era when information accessibility and cybersecurity play a critical role in mission success,” Teri Takai, the department’s chief information officer, said in a statement. BlackBerry shares fell. (Thanks @modelportfolio2003 for the link.)]]>
"With new BB10 smartphones launching in the US only in mid-March or later at subsidized prices no better than competing high-end Apple/Samsung smartphones, combined with our expectations for the Galaxy S IV to launch at a similar time frame in the US market, we are lowering our BB10 sales estimates for the February quarter and all of [BlackBerry fiscal year] 2014.” BlackBerry's quarter ends at the end of February.]]>
A representative for the home improvement chain confirmed the news to AppleInsider, saying the move will displace roughly 10,000 Blackberry smartphones.…
The initiative will not yet impact the approximately 60,000 rugged Motorola smartphones (34,000+ so-called "First Phones" and 25,000+ "First Phone Jrs") used by store employees. Those devices will remain in operation on retail store floors for mobile point-of-sale, analytical, walkie-talkie, and traditional telephony purposes. Subsequently checked and confirmed by Reuters. Home Depot (the world's fifth largest retailer by revenue) wouldn't say if this move preceded or postdated the release of BB10 - though the former seems likely.]]>
The manufacturer, who unveiled its BB10 phones last week, has had success with the prepay market, particularly among young people, and the move could disappoint retailers. Its 9320 handset was the bestselling Christmas handset, so the lack of a BB10 pre-pay device would leave retailers without a guaranteed hit.
Europe MD Stephen Bates told Mobile the manufacturer would focus pre-pay sales on its existing BlackBerry 7 and 7.1 handsets. He said: ‘With BB10 we are trying to establish a new platform. We are intending to expand the portfolio towards the mid-tier in 2013 and entry-level phones will come next year.’ Stephen Bates with the snappy soundbites that have made him so famous. But if BlackBerry keeps selling its BB7 handsets, what's the problem?]]>
“We believe Carphone Warehouse is seeing widespread sell-outs, while O2, Vodafone, Orange and EE are seeing robust demand,” Misek explained. “We estimate sell-in to be at least several hundred thousand units.” Translation: "sell-in" = units shipped to retailers.]]>
The surprise name change, which takes effect immediately, was announced by CEO Thorsten Heins at an event in New York to launch the company's new BlackBerry 10 operating system and smartphones.
"Our customers use the BlackBerry, our employees work for BlackBerry, and our shareholders are owners of BlackBerry. From today on, we are BlackBerry everywhere in the world," he said at the event, which was broadcast. Compare Apple Computer changing its name to Apple Inc with the launch of the iPhone. Any other tech name changes spring to mind?]]>
This is largely because the market is dominated by two platforms: Android, which is seen as an unsecure malware magnet, and iOS, which comes from a firm that has never learned to spell "IT." In fact, Apple's biggest failures were Lisa and the Apple Server, both created on Steve Jobs' watch (Lisa was even his product, initially) and both targeted at the IT market.
While phones and tablets are largely a consumer play, they are increasingly being used for business. Even in a BYOD world, IT still has a great deal of say about the hardware connected to its networks and services. As we start 2013, and as RIM brings out its next-generation products, the company will stand alone as the only mobile solutions provider focused on IT first and the needs of users later. This one's a keeper. Check back in 12 months.]]>
Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins, who will introduce the BlackBerry 10 operating system next month, told analysts on a Dec. 20 conference call that RIM faces pressure to reduce fees to “stay relevant in our markets.” The Waterloo, Ontario-based company dropped the most in more than four years on Dec. 21 in Toronto. Carriers pay RIM a monthly per-subscriber fee. But for the past two quarters, RIM and carriers have been saying the same thing: the smartphone maker's ability to keep that fee up has dropped.]]>