Comment by szundi
1 year ago
Only thing to add that it was funny how Blackberry didn't get for years that the browser is so important in the phones. Others missed that as well, everyone was doing the stupid half-browser thing. Of course they did as a normal browser needed a level up from their hardwares to be a PC leauge player.
This would have maybe delayed the inevitable though for some years anyway, just sayin.
Blackberry did eventually get their act together, but it was too late. There was a Blackberry KEY2 phone based on Android, with a valiant effort to sandbox Android/Google with Blackberry security policy controls. That phone belongs in a museum of adversarial interoperability, alongside Godzilla/Kong memes.
We need more devices with runtime competition between tech titans. Some is visible on iOS with Apple v. Facebook on ad targeting and contact databases.
Blackberry was primarily a corporate vendor, their phones were geared for email and Exchange server support, not end users, and their corporate users presumably weren't surfing the internet on their phones regularly. By the time of the iPhone, these features were available to the consumer market as well and it was no longer a unique advantage for them.