BlackBerry To Allow Rivals To Manage Its Smartphones 43
jfruh (300774) writes "BlackBerry broke its longstanding business model recently by announcing that its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 management platform would be able to manage not just BlackBerry devices, but Android and iOS gadgets as well. Now, in a new announcement, the company is also exploring the flipside of that coin, allowing software from other companies to manage BlackBerry phones. The moves acknowledge a world in which fewer and fewer people are interested in a vertical BlackBerry solution — but also seem to kill the last things that make BlackBerry special."
Death throes .. (Score:5, Insightful)
RIM/BlackBerry has been in decline for years.
The stuff they played a role in pioneering are now pretty much commodities. They rested on their laurels for way too long, and eventually got lapped by the rest of the market. Apple and Android have huge market shares compared to what BlackBerry still has.
They've been laying off people, closing buildings, and putting out products hardly anybody buys, and they've been saddled with ineffective management for years.
They're well on their way to becoming a footnote. Their founders all got rich and moved on.
What we're watching is the dying days of a once cool company.
Sad to see them go, but this is largely a mess of their own creation, even if they don't realize it.
I know people who owned their PlayBook tablet -- and, quite frankly, they were crap. There was nothing in the store, their Android support was a joke, and then they stopped giving updates for it. I'm betting most of the people who ever owned that tablet wouldn't ever own another product from them.