Blackberry has announced a new android-based blackberry:

Android? Really? Blackberry’s one claim to fame has always been the security of their devices. Now they offer a new improved one with the most insecure operating system available for mobiles?  Interesting strategy.

This reminds me of a scene from Monty Python in which a man brings a cart around to pestilence ridden villages ringing a bell and proclaiming loudly “Bring out your dead”.  John Cleese has this old sick guy with him and tries to give him to the cart man.  The sick guy keeps protesting “but I’m not dead”.  Cleese says that he’s almost dead and to just shut up and get on the cart.  The cart man won’t take him because it’s against regulations.  After some quick negotiation for a favor, the cart man bashes the sick man in the head and loads him up on the cart.

Doesn’t anyone have a stick to put Blackberry out of their misery? 

They lost their market edge due to inability to compete with all of the feature-laden consumer grade products.  Now, they are struggling and clawing to try to regain some relevancy in the marketplace.  They are trying to leverage their BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) product, expanding it to handle non-blackberry products in an attempt to own the MDM (Mobile Device Manager) market.  They recently purchased Watchdox, a really decent enterprise file share product.  This purchase caused Watchdox to drop from the top-right of the Gartner magic quadrant, down to the lower right quadrant (not such a good place to be).  This reflects a perceived inability to execute on product/feature delivery.  Now they have released an android phone.  Perhaps it’s just me finding this humorous and perhaps a little sad.

Bring out your dead!