Android

"But, you might ask, what about your bank account? If that information were public, wouldn't bad actors simply take your money? They might, which is why we need to construct systems that don't just require a number that you have already shared with others to authorize payments. Apple Pay and Android Pay are such systems. Every transaction requires an additional form of authentication at the time of transaction. Two factor authentication systems will become much more common in the future for any action that you will take in the digital world. In addition, we will rely more and more on systems such as Sift Science, another USV portfolio company, that assess in real time the likelihood that a particular transaction is fraudulent, taking into account hundreds of different factors."

"Yach charged his software teams to work on alternative plans. Two possible solutions emerged, neither of them ideal: Yach favored running the existing Java BlackBerry platform on top of QNX’s core technology in order to support existing apps. But many developers, including Alan Brenner, championed a different approach: tacking the BlackBerry interface on top of an Android operating system with QNX at its core. Android offered ready-made technology that would enable RIM to push out a new device to market quickly, with a running start in consumer apps, where Android was a significant player. But it would also mean apps developed for BlackBerry wouldn’t work anymore. By late 2010, Yach embraced a third option: combining RIM’s Java operating system with Android’s. Lazaridis wanted no Java on future BlackBerrys and was troubled by Android: he felt an Android BlackBerry would be less distinguishable from countless other smartphones and would be far less secure than the QNX or existing BlackBerry operating systems because Android was written using publicly available open-source code. Businesses were sure to reject it. Nevertheless, Lazaridis allowed the debate to play out for months. “There was no right answer,” says one engineer involved in the discussions. “You just needed to pick an option and run with it. There was more and more discussion about looking at options than making a decision. And making the decision wasn’t easy because ownership wasn’t there. I think the decision was clear in Mike’s mind: there was going to be a rewrite, done by brand-new people. It was probably the right decision. But the execution of that decision,” in the engineer’s view, “was done poorly.”"

"Balsillie concluded that RIM’s hardware business would never recover. “When the game changes, if you’re not able to become what the game is now, you must pivot to another game,” he says. “I saw a tsunami of Androids coming and didn’t want to bet everything” on BlackBerry 10 smartphones. RIM, he says, had to offset the vulnerability of the hardware business with “a big, big shift.”"

"Apple’s ecosystem was being wildly underestimated. Whether it was the way its products synced content across devices or locked the consumer in, the company’s dual control of hardware and software acted as a protective moat from the onslaught of new competitors. Investors worried that cheap Chinese handsets would emerge as a massive threat—but they were more of a threat to Samsung’s dominance, not Apple’s. While Samsung, relying on Android, struggled to differentiate its phones and would see its sales in China plummet, Apple’s narrow focus on the high end paid off. In hindsight, Apple’s share price and media image were suffering for all the wrong reasons in 2013. The company *was* facing an existential threat—but it wasn’t from Android; it was from Beijing."

"Wanting to help Apple understand its predicament in China, Guthrie started traveling and interviewing suppliers. In his talks with dozens of them, a common theme emerged. “Working with Apple is really fucking hard,” suppliers would tell him. He’d respond: “So don’t.” And they would demur: “We can’t. We learn so much.” He soon grasped this dynamic wasn’t at all the industry norm. Suppliers to Apple’s rivals typically worked on a limited number of units, as Android phones and Windows-based computers catered across the price and geography spectrums. That meant each brand would sell dozens of different models per year, with varying components."