Folks, you can't kill Blackberry.
I don't care what you do.
blackberry phones have died twice and they're coming back for a third time.
That's right.
You thought it died when blackberry itself stopped making blackberry phones.
You thought it died when TCL announced that it was stopped making blackberry branded phones but I'm here to tell you, Blackberry is going nowhere.
Well, I mean, it's going somewhere because it's coming back.
In 2021, five g Android powered blackberry phones are coming from onward mobility because you just can't keep a good blackberry down.
Now this right here is the rundown.
You can see what we're covering, you can jump around, I won't mind.
It seems like every year the same thing gets reported.
Blackberry phones are back and that's the weird thing.
It's because blackberry keeps dying, right?
And it keeps coming back.
But here's why it'll never die.
It's because people still know the BlackBerry brand.
Can we show that beautiful footage back in the day when people were using blackberries.
So cool.
Look at the pearl.
It was amazing.
It was the king of the hill.
And then something called the iPhone showed up in 2007.
And it said, We don't need no stinking keyboard.
We didn't need no stinking keys man.
Is get rid of all these buttons and just make a giant screen.
But here's the thing when Research In Motion the company behind blackberry This Canadian company good old neighbors to the North there.
They didn't take the iPhone as a serious threat.
Now that as you can see has been a mistake.
Now back in February 2007 Research In Motion co CEO, Jim Balsillie had this to say about the iPhone.
It's kind of one more entrance into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers.
But in terms of a sort of a sea change for Blackberry, I would think that's overstating it.
Look, Jim wasn't alone with his opinion.
Here's what Microsoft, Steve Ballmer had to say in January 2007 $500.
Fully subsidized with a plan.
I said that isn't the most expensive phone in the world.
It doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine.
I Steve wasn't completely nuts.
He also said it may sell very well or not.
We have our strategy.
Back to Research In Motion in 2008.
rims.
Other co CEO, Jim Lazarus gave some insight into what the company was thinking on touchscreen devices.
Lazur Rita said we have to be realistic about the history of this technology.
We have to remember that this is not new.
This has been done.
This has been tried before, when asked what he thought was the most exciting mobile trend, he said, full QWERTY keyboards.
I'm sorry, it really is.
I'm not making this up.
People are running out of their two year contracts.
And they're coming into the stores.
And they want to be able to do Facebook.
And they want to be able to do instant messaging.
And they want to be able to do email.
And they ask for those features thinking that they're going to get another flip phone, and they're walking out with a curve or a pearl because they're the best devices for doing those kinds of activities.
And so what is the defining factor?
The keyboard, He really said that.
That's a quote.
It's real.
There's a great article by the Wall Street Journal that looks into the development of Rims full screen devices.
According to that report, Rim was approached to make an iPhone competitor by Vodafone and Verizon.
[MUSIC]
That's how the world got the BlackBerry storm the phone with the screen that clicks.
Quickly click.
Verizon president said the storm actually did sell very well.
However, Verizon did subsidize the storm quite heavily.
But there were problems with the storm.
It had all kinds of hardware issues.
Clicking on the corners of the clicky screen did not always work well.
And this software was buggy.
This was because Rim rushed to produce the device it was given nine months to develop the storm.
It took 15 according to the book losing the signal The Untold Story Behind the extraordinary rise and spectacular fall of blackberry Verizon's chief marketing officer told Rim that virtually every one of the 1 million storm phones shipped in 2008 needed replacing.
That many of the replacements were returned, and Verizon wanted close to $500 million from Rim Force losses.
Great.
So in 2010, at&t wanders around they poke rim in the arm.
They're like, Hey, how about another iPhone competitor.
That's how we got the BlackBerry torch.
That touchscreen phone.
Phone with a slider keyboard.
That general report also mentioned that the rim sales division made a research report that said that tactile keyboards were going to be a diminishing part of the overall market.
Did Ram executives listen?
Sit with me know in 2013 Research In Motion rebranded as blackberry and the world got the BlackBerry Z10.
Its new BlackBerry Z10 phone, but run blackberry 10 OS, a gesture based mobile OS made by Blackberry.
It looks slick and modern.
So that's good, So let's talk about the Z 10.
The phone it looks like a certain Apple device.
It was also entering a world where Android owned over 70% of the smartphone market and iOS had 21%.
blackberry was standing at 3.2%.
Those numbers are from q4 of 2012.
So blackberry was facing a pretty uphill battle by going with its own OS.
The company did have around 70,000 apps at launch.
So that's good.
But that didn't work out.
Not so well.
So BlackBerry OS eventually gained the ability to run Android apps, that happened in 2015.
Now at that time, BlackBerry's global market share was at less than; 1% Let's take a quick detour.
In December 2013, a company called typo backs by Ryan Seacrest.
Yes, that Ryan Seacrest introduced a physical keyboard for the iPhone.
It is seriously influenced by the BlackBerry keyboard.
How influenced Okay, so blackberry sued type of products for patent infringement in January 2014.
One month after this thing was introduced to the world, Blackberry also won an injunction that prohibited the sales of the type of keyboard.
typo, so the keyboards anyway, so that wasn't cool.
The two companies eventually settled in June 2015 Detour over.
In September 2015, Blackberry announced the BlackBerry prif, which would be running Android.
The print of had a sliding screen with a full keyboard underneath.
Then it's a tember 2016.
It was over.
For the first time, Blackberry said it would no longer be building its own phones.
February 2017, the BlackBerry phone returns for the first time.
TCL bought the rights to the name in December 2016.
You might know TCL as a TV maker, because they make TVs.
It's hard to tell you what TCL was thinking with their blackberry phones other than, Hey, how about keyboards, people love keyboards, right?
Let's make some of those blackberry things.
As an aside, they probably were just using the brand name to get themselves into the market.
TCL kept at blackberry for around three years before announcing it was ditching blackberry phones.
Now TCL is hanging around in the phone space under its own brand.
blackberry phones were dead.
Again, August 2017, the news hits, blackberry returns on word mobility is here to make new blackberry phones that should release in the first half of 2021.
Let's show you part of the announcement.
I'm excited to announce our agreement with blackberry and Foxconn Technology Group subsidiary, FIH Mobile To deliver a new 5G, Blackberry Android smartphone with a physical keyboard.
He seems like such a friendly guy.
Don't know much about OnwardMobility?Well the company is a startup and according to its LinkedIn profile, it is privately held and has somewhere between two and ten employees.
OnwardMobility is pushing security it CEO said blackberry smartphones are known for protecting communications.
privacy and data.
This is an incredible opportunity for onward mobility will onward mobility be issuing a press release in a few years that says, we're also out of the BlackBerry game.
It's happened before, only time will tell.
And after that time, we'll see who else wants to give the BlackBerry brand another life.
Maybe it'll even be you Now if I end up making blackberry phones, I think I would like it to look like this.
Yes, a rollable screen that comes out of a keyboard.
That way, I can go from a classic blackberry pager look to the blackberry, classic look.
And then to a standard phonebook, there would have to be some kind of mechanism to keep the device rigid when the screen is out.
So maybe rip off that LG rollable TV design.
[SOUND]
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Why go so blackberry bold?
Here's why.
If you want the BlackBerry brand to be successful, and you want it to be noticed, you got to rethink everything on my adapter and I'll see you online
