Not going to happen. Not for a long time. As much as we would want it to.
The phone market is brutally, viciously competitive and an outsider trying to jump in without Android or iOS is almost guaranteed to fail. We used to have numerous options from all kinds of companies that came with a variety of operating systems but each one fell to the duopoly.
People are glued to their phones and social media more than ever. I would expect an attempt to get them to move to a non-American mobile operating system and phone would fail very quickly. Blackberry did used to make their own line of phones that ran BB10 and they were excellent. Nobody bought them though, or at least not enough to justify their continued production. Even fewer bought the following Android-powered BB phones and eventually Blackberry pulled out of the market. The same story for Windows mobile phones.
There are plenty of options for non-American cellphones and I’m sure in the coming years we will see Canadian ones too. The problem is that they will almost certainly run Android which means American control over your data and feeds. Getting Canadians to accept a sacrifice in short-term phone functionality to regain digital freedom in the long run is a tall order.
I think the problem is that many companies, if they don’t see a path to monopoly or near monopoly, cash out and close shop.
For example Fairphone has been going for 12 years. There’s no reason BlackBerry couldn’t make a basic phone running Lineage and stick to a tiny profitable market share.
Capitalism requires companies to constantly grow or they risk being taken over either by being purchased or out-competed in the market by it’s competitors to the point where they cant sustain. It forces them to try to monoplise just to survive.
Ive been looking at the Fairphone as my next phone for some time now. My only concern is how long they intend to sell replacement parts for. I do not see any parts for fairphone 1 or 2 parts for sale. And currently in America only fairphone 3 is for sale. My concern is if I buy it how long it will be before the 3rd model’s parts are no longer available.
(Unrelated: Is your username a King Gizzard reference?)
They had a working qnx phone that ran Android apps, but google didn’t let them run some essential services and store support was awful.
It was a good attempt though. Bb app devs were getting paid a lot better than Apple/android/microsoft because the apps could be priced higher. It’s the “free” apps that were a problem.
Netflix actively declined 2 full time devs paid for by BlackBerry to build and maintain an app. They weren’t going to get any additional subs from Netflix on qnx, it was just going to be a development boat anchor.
I still have my red bb passport and to this day still think it was the best mobile phone ever made.
I think forking android could be viable if they put some weight behind it
The difference between this and fireOS is they’re almost guaranteed sales. No foreign government is going to stick with an American company if they have a comparable option from a reliable ally at this point… That’s got to be hundreds of millions of sales on that front alone
If they can make something good, polish it for a few years, and demonstrate they can lock it down that’s almost guaranteed sales. And if they use that opportunity to further improve for a couple generations, they could become a real contender
The only question is will they throw enough resources at it and will they stick with improving it without giving up too early
Not going to happen. Not for a long time. As much as we would want it to.
The phone market is brutally, viciously competitive and an outsider trying to jump in without Android or iOS is almost guaranteed to fail. We used to have numerous options from all kinds of companies that came with a variety of operating systems but each one fell to the duopoly.
People are glued to their phones and social media more than ever. I would expect an attempt to get them to move to a non-American mobile operating system and phone would fail very quickly. Blackberry did used to make their own line of phones that ran BB10 and they were excellent. Nobody bought them though, or at least not enough to justify their continued production. Even fewer bought the following Android-powered BB phones and eventually Blackberry pulled out of the market. The same story for Windows mobile phones.
There are plenty of options for non-American cellphones and I’m sure in the coming years we will see Canadian ones too. The problem is that they will almost certainly run Android which means American control over your data and feeds. Getting Canadians to accept a sacrifice in short-term phone functionality to regain digital freedom in the long run is a tall order.
I think the problem is that many companies, if they don’t see a path to monopoly or near monopoly, cash out and close shop.
For example Fairphone has been going for 12 years. There’s no reason BlackBerry couldn’t make a basic phone running Lineage and stick to a tiny profitable market share.
Capitalism requires companies to constantly grow or they risk being taken over either by being purchased or out-competed in the market by it’s competitors to the point where they cant sustain. It forces them to try to monoplise just to survive.
Ive been looking at the Fairphone as my next phone for some time now. My only concern is how long they intend to sell replacement parts for. I do not see any parts for fairphone 1 or 2 parts for sale. And currently in America only fairphone 3 is for sale. My concern is if I buy it how long it will be before the 3rd model’s parts are no longer available.
(Unrelated: Is your username a King Gizzard reference?)
Companies do not have to chase increased profits. That’s a choice. Genda Shigyō has been making paper products for over 1,200 years.
It doesn’t matter if other companies grow larger than your company as long as you make a profit.
They had a working qnx phone that ran Android apps, but google didn’t let them run some essential services and store support was awful.
It was a good attempt though. Bb app devs were getting paid a lot better than Apple/android/microsoft because the apps could be priced higher. It’s the “free” apps that were a problem.
Netflix actively declined 2 full time devs paid for by BlackBerry to build and maintain an app. They weren’t going to get any additional subs from Netflix on qnx, it was just going to be a development boat anchor.
I still have my red bb passport and to this day still think it was the best mobile phone ever made.
All they’d need to do is have compatibility with android apps, and make it easy to access them.
I think forking android could be viable if they put some weight behind it
The difference between this and fireOS is they’re almost guaranteed sales. No foreign government is going to stick with an American company if they have a comparable option from a reliable ally at this point… That’s got to be hundreds of millions of sales on that front alone
If they can make something good, polish it for a few years, and demonstrate they can lock it down that’s almost guaranteed sales. And if they use that opportunity to further improve for a couple generations, they could become a real contender
The only question is will they throw enough resources at it and will they stick with improving it without giving up too early