Go meet customers, your friends, guys in a bar, kids, your parents with a bag full of iPhones the minute you can. Whatever you do, bypass IT teams that love Blackberry and have invested their time in it and like it. Talk to consumers. IT teams and the profits from having people tied to BES etc will blind you.
Make everyone watch a 20 minute video clip on both phones and ask them which was easier to use. Get them to type out XYZ thing that they hear. Give them the phones for a week and bring them back and ask them to type something else out. See how fast they can type on a screen vs keyboard. Think about what will be more useful a big screen or slightly faster typing.
Then go make a iPhone version and Mac/Windows version of Blackberry Messenger. Give it away for free on all platforms. When that's done. Expand BES to control MDM laptops.
Go find a small company that does music well, ideally one in Stockholm. Integrate their product into your phone and cross platform desktop offering. Use the cheap data deals you have for BES for music, it'll be expensive but will capture a young audience and will differentiate quickly from the iPod to iPhone leap many will make. Data plans are still expensive so driving down the cost will be helpful.
Open source the phone code early but keep the services under your control. Find whoever is running the BlackBerry Store and fire them. Then anyone else who was involved with that. Invent a Men-In-Black memory eraser and use it wisely on anyone involved with that. Find out what the cost of the iPhone app store is, undercut it and switch the model so that the first X percent of initial sales go to the developer.
Hire a couple of smart people and build a free online training course and certification to help people build apps. Treat them nicely. Give them free stuff and whatever tooling they need to build stuff. Translate it into many languages. Pick up the phone and get people from all walks of life, including dire poverty in places in Asia and Africa. Ask them what they would look for to make their life easier (hmm payments you say, hmmmm cheaper phones you say, hmmmm use BES as a sort of Free Basics). Build a decent Chinese Keyboard.
Build search into your phone.
Don't join PRISM, don't do some shady stuff in the Middle East and India about encryption.
Build you the stuff that BES can do well. Messaging turning into productivity. Expand cloud hosting. Turn messaging into something more fun and social. Use encryption as a competitive advantage in the long run. Strike a few deals with phone companies for VOIP.
Go tell the world you aren't worried about it and your main concern is Microsoft (they'll balls up mobile eventually anyway) and oh report Steve Jobs for engaging in anticompetitive contact crap for developers.
Make everyone watch a 20 minute video clip on both phones and ask them which was easier to use. Get them to type out XYZ thing that they hear. Give them the phones for a week and bring them back and ask them to type something else out. See how fast they can type on a screen vs keyboard. Think about what will be more useful a big screen or slightly faster typing.
Then go make a iPhone version and Mac/Windows version of Blackberry Messenger. Give it away for free on all platforms. When that's done. Expand BES to control MDM laptops.
Go find a small company that does music well, ideally one in Stockholm. Integrate their product into your phone and cross platform desktop offering. Use the cheap data deals you have for BES for music, it'll be expensive but will capture a young audience and will differentiate quickly from the iPod to iPhone leap many will make. Data plans are still expensive so driving down the cost will be helpful.
Open source the phone code early but keep the services under your control. Find whoever is running the BlackBerry Store and fire them. Then anyone else who was involved with that. Invent a Men-In-Black memory eraser and use it wisely on anyone involved with that. Find out what the cost of the iPhone app store is, undercut it and switch the model so that the first X percent of initial sales go to the developer.
Hire a couple of smart people and build a free online training course and certification to help people build apps. Treat them nicely. Give them free stuff and whatever tooling they need to build stuff. Translate it into many languages. Pick up the phone and get people from all walks of life, including dire poverty in places in Asia and Africa. Ask them what they would look for to make their life easier (hmm payments you say, hmmmm cheaper phones you say, hmmmm use BES as a sort of Free Basics). Build a decent Chinese Keyboard.
Build search into your phone.
Don't join PRISM, don't do some shady stuff in the Middle East and India about encryption.
Build you the stuff that BES can do well. Messaging turning into productivity. Expand cloud hosting. Turn messaging into something more fun and social. Use encryption as a competitive advantage in the long run. Strike a few deals with phone companies for VOIP.
Go tell the world you aren't worried about it and your main concern is Microsoft (they'll balls up mobile eventually anyway) and oh report Steve Jobs for engaging in anticompetitive contact crap for developers.