Blackberry's Demise: It's All About The Apps Stupid!

This year Blackberry launched its Blackberry 10 model to compete with iPhone and Android.   Coupled with the launch was the announcement of Alicia Keys as “Creative Director”.  I love Alicia Keys.  She is one of the most talented artists today.  However, having Alicia Keys as “Creative Director” for Blackberry was like putting whipped cream on a pile of horse droppings. 

Blackberry’s Fundamental Problem: APPS!

Back in 2006, I investigated the possibility of developing apps for the Blackberry.  It was a complete nightmare!  Blackberry required me to develop my app separately for every different model of Blackberry phone.  At the time there were 6 models that I was targeting, thus I would have had to develop my app 6 different times.  This was insane!

Most consumers choose iPhone/Android for the bountiful supply of apps available.  I predicted Blackberry’s demise before version 10 launched.  The only thing that could have saved them was an easy way for Android developers (or iPhone developers) to port their apps to Blackberry.  Blackberry engineers should have built in a Linux emulator which could easily run Android apps.  These apps could have been ported to the Blackberry app store.  Blackberry could have had an easy acceptance program by automatically accepting apps which had been approved by Google/Apple.

Most sane developers have chosen to avoid Blackberry for (1) Lack of market share and (2) Lack of a development platform that could port existing code.

Today, it was announced that Blackberry is up sale.  This should be of no big surprise to anyone.  So, to you Crackberry fans, when are you going to trade in that old monster of a phone for a real smart phone?  What do you think?