Developers losing faith in BlackBerry's prospects

Posted: 13 Jul 2012, 08:57, by Victor H.

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Developers losing faith in BlackBerry's prospects

When it rains it pours. The saying is especially true for phone makers nowadays - whenever a company starts losing market share, some form of chain reaction gets activated and it’s extremely hard to stop sliding down from there on. Now, RIM is experiencing this first hand as it’s losing not only sales, but developer confidence and trust into its BlackBerry platform.

A recent survey of BlackBerry developers done by Baird Equity Research found that repeated delays of BlackBerry 10 and dwindling sales have pushed developer confidence to a new low. The 200 sampled devs out of a set of 4,300 showed trust in BB10 fall to 3.8 from 4.6 on a 10-degree scale.

“31 percent of sampled BlackBerry 10 developers said that they have shifted some or all of their work away from BB10, compared with 34 percent in Q1. This is the second quarter in which we have seen fewer responders indicating that they will shift some of their work away from BlackBerry. We believe that many developers who planned to jump ship have already made the move, leaving a BlackBerry developer base that is smaller but increasingly loyal,” Baird summarized.

Summing up the facts, now we’ve had two consecutive quarters during which confidence dropped by around 30%. Additionally, an overwhelming majority of 71% of devs were intrigued by the recent Windows Phone 8 announcement.

source: Baird Equity Research via All Things D

16 Comments

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posted on 13 Jul 2012, 09:02 3

1. metoyou (Posts: 279; Member since: 19 Oct 2011)

Even myself losing faith in them..so sad

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 09:10 5

2. Jeradiah3 (Posts: 1118; Member since: 11 Feb 2010)

the only reason that they're still in business is because the government still uses them. I'll give them 3 years to improve or they're going bankrupt

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 09:21 4

4. tigermcm (Posts: 860; Member since: 02 Sep 2009)

less than that IMO. werent there stories of some government agencies picking up android and iOS already?

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 10:09 2

7. Jeradiah3 (Posts: 1118; Member since: 11 Feb 2010)

there was a story about it, bt they stayed with blackberry because of their security advances

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 11:30 2

9. Aeires (unregistered)

Military went with Android, most for it's ability to modify the OS to fit their needs.

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 09:11 2

3. cepcamba (Posts: 717; Member since: 27 Feb 2012)

I'm actually wondering why RIM's CEO is very confident BB10 will succeed. The only reason I can think of is if BB10 can directly download apps from the PlayStore and be fully compatible with Android apps without any re-writing from devs. Now that would be something up their sleeves.

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 09:44 5

5. ilia1986 (unregistered)

Better switch to Android before it's too late.

Btw it's great to be back after not being here for a week due to windows re-installation and all. :)

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 10:04 2

6. MeoCao (unregistered)

Exactly, RIM justr doesn't have resources to compete with Google, Apple and MS. It should concentrate in what it does best and that is securirty and messaging. And it should not choose WP as it will have to pay license fees for a inferior OS.

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 13:27 2

11. Doakie (Posts: 2227; Member since: 06 May 2009)

I agree, I think BlackBerry and Nokia should have just switched to a fully skinned version of Android. They would have an OS that didn't cost them anything, a huge app ecosystem, and instant customer recognition... Meh, stupid moves on the parts of CEOs...

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 11:24 2

8. InspectorGadget80 (unregistered)

Blame the CEO

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 12:18 2

10. akita256 (Posts: 81; Member since: 26 Jan 2012)

Heins just looks like a babe in the woods. He doesn't appear to have a clue.

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 20:53

12. Fuego84 (Posts: 352; Member since: 13 May 2012)

Maybe they were afraid of competing against Samsung, HTC, Motorola, since they do put out a lot of android handsets. But on the other hand they're still competing against them but with a long forgotten OS.

posted on 13 Jul 2012, 21:02

13. Glim12808 (Posts: 394; Member since: 26 Oct 2011)

Heinz is reported to have said that it is better that BB10 gets released Q1 2013 so it doesn't compete with devices from other platforms in Q4 2012. That sure sounds like Heins is not too confident BB10 can slug it out with Jelly Bean, iOS6, WP8. If he doesn't sound too confident, no wonder developers are not too confident either.

posted on 14 Jul 2012, 09:43

15. downphoenix (Posts: 3165; Member since: 19 Jun 2010)

Wrong. He probably wanted it delayed to Q12013 since they probably were not ready to launch by Q32012. Q4 is going to be oversaturated, as that quarter will see the new Iphone, likely the new Nexus phone, new WP8 handsets, and other new Android models. Video games have delays like this too, a lot of big games come out in Q4, and some get washed under the current despite their marketing and quality, just because of the sheer options available. People can't afford to play them all, so makes more sense to delay from a couple more months, when they could have the market to themselves, and won't have to spend as much promoting the product to make a similar impact. Plus that delay allows for fine tuning. Something that BB10 shares with some high profile titles that get delayed into the next year. Those couple of months can make all the difference. I guess the matter is, does RIM have the cash flow and reserves to last that long?

posted on 14 Jul 2012, 00:02

14. Jay2ice (Posts: 13; Member since: 15 Jun 2012)

Doakie, I'm so sure Nokia wont regret having picked up windows phone but most people are so short-sighted they can't see beyond their noses.

posted on 14 Jul 2012, 11:04

16. jack1059 (Posts: 72; Member since: 31 Mar 2012)

RIM keep missing release dates. And missing the most important release date for your company - the release of BB10 - was disasterous. Hard to climb out of that hole when youre on a downard spiral as it is. I think there is a slim chance they can do it. But BB10 had better be simply stellar. Otherwise I cant see them recovering.