Blackberry-Out of Juice!
Blackberry-Out of Juice!
Introduction:
Blackberry
was founded in 1984 as a manufacturer of modems
and pagers only. However, in 2000, BlackBerry launched its first
smartphone model called BlackBerry 957. It is the
first smartphone model with Internet surfing
and dynamic email sending functions.
In the 2000s,
BlackBerry was known as a standard and premium brand not
only for smart business people, but also for those
who value privacy and security. But in 2007, when
tech giant Apple launched its first smartphone. BlackBerry has experienced
good competition in the market. Then, as technology evolved and
companies like Google launched mobile phones, a great deal
of competition began.
Given
BlackBerry's exponential growth chart, no one should have
been surprised that the company would go bankrupt! And here
begins the end of the BlackBerry era.
Data set and
Analysis:
Reason of
Downfall and possible solutions / recommendations:
Hardware Innovation:
With the evolving
technology, BlackBerry was considered to be overpricing on its average hardware
system. Soon as Apple and Samsung launched their smartphones with a complete
touch screen body. Also, the keyword disappears when you're done typing,
leaving plenty of room for other uses. However, BlackBerry
with QWERTY keyboard lacked such a feature, which was a major cause of
BlackBerry's failure. Despite
this, Blackberry has not invested in making full
touchscreen cases, but continues to make phones with external
keyboards like the Blackberry Key 2. Sales
have dropped significantly because of this. So, they should have
worked more on their hardware.
Targeting Audience:
BlackBerry primarily focused
on wealthy sectors such as celebrities, businessmen and
other wealthy managers. They tend to wear BlackBerrys to
show their dominance. The reasons for using Blackberry are:
- Strong End-to-End Encryption
Security
- Sophisticated PDA Supports
Business Greatly
- Email Service
But as soon as
iPhone sales increased, Blackberry quickly lost its massive user
base and importance. In
addition, BlackBerry focused only on enterprise-level marketing
and ignored the consumer part. This also played a big role
in it's failure. Company should have focused a bit on other economic class
too.
Research and
Development:
BlackBerry did not
fail. Innovation and advanced features were lacking
as technology and monitoring were always up to date. But the
reason BlackBerry failed is money. BlackBerry innovations and
features are the result of research and
development (R&D). However, this required funding, and failures
such as declining sales prevented the company from investing in
research and development. This prevented BlackBerry
from realizing its fundamental potential. RIM then
sold BlackBerry brand to TCD (a Chinese company). Company should
have invested more in R&D sector.
Operating System:
BlackBerry's operating
system lacked some key features and technologies. Developers
cannot build apps at scale.
Other operating systems offer free directories for
developers to create corresponding apps. However, Android and iOS
allowed customization of the
application, as users could remove and add them
at will. Therefore, the developer was completely
satisfied with Android and
iOS. Nevertheless, BlackBerry continued to develop its
own operating system, which was a disaster. They should have focused
on their operating system.
Accepting the change
late:
BlackBerry finally
unveiled a new smartphone with sophisticated features
to regain its lost presence and customers. Launched Priv with
features like a dual-curved UHD display, pop-up widgets, 3GB of RAM
and a Snapdragon 808 CPU. But it was too late. The phone
was an absolute disappointment. The quality and functionality of
the product lacked some key technologies. BlackBerry was not meant
to add new features or advanced operating systems. For this reason,
a potential BlackBerry consumer switched to Android and
iOS.
Lesson Learned:
Today, production of
BlackBerry smartphones has completely ended. So, they urned back to
software and mobile security solutions. BlackBerry's technological
sophistication has given it a market dominance, leaving behind
the untapped. However, when it came
to advancing BlackBerry's technology, the
company failed due
to its inability to assess and compete with the level
of competition in the market.
BlackBerry has left
some key takeaways and examples for other tech companies
that need to evolve their capabilities and technology to survive in
the tech world.
Source and
References:
- Book- "Losing the Signal: The
Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of
BlackBerry"
- https://startuptalky.com/blackberry-case-study/
- Book- "Victim of Success: The
Rise and Fall of BlackBerry"
- Aditya Pachore
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