The Tragic Death of BlackBerry
In 2009, The Global Market share of Blackberry was 20%, acquired 50% from the US market, and around 50 M devices were sold per year. SO, Who killed BlackBerry?!
1. The Origin of BlackBerry
BlackBerry was known as Research in Motion (RIM) which was founded by two Canadian Engineers in 1984. RIM was obsessed about wireless technology and their main target was the enterprises. In 1996, it came up with the BlackBerry 850 Pager with the exclusive BlackBerry Enterprise Server that enabled push emails instantaneously. It was kind of a revolution back then.
Sooner, they launched the BlackBerry 957, to send and receive messages with the unique QWERTY keyboard and pencil batteries. Businesspeople no longer need to carry their heavy laptops or PCs everywhere to download their emails, though they still couldn’t make calls.
2. The Ultimate Growth.
In 2003, RIM launched the smartphone BlackBerry 7230 that made BlackBerry booming! The gave a month free trial to businesspeople and investors, as they were confident they wouldn’t dispense with it.
Few years later, BlackBerrys developed cameras and new multimedia capabilities, which made them appealing to a larger segment of users that reached 4.9 million in 2006; with 10x growth in sales. In addition to the BlackBerry Messaging service (BBM) which was amazing to teenagers. They invented WhatsApp before WhatsApp was there! Successfully, the BlackBerry sold around 50 million devices per year, with annual sales of almost $20B!
3. Into The Storm.
Well, it all began in 2007 when Steve Jobs pitched the idea of a full touchscreen. He criticized the user interface of Nokia and blackberry, and for having fixed control buttons in plastic that hinders any sort of changes.
Until then, Apple wasn’t a strong competitor to BlackBerry, Though their idea was fantastic, and their strategy was completely different from RIM. RIM ignored iPhone and initially their decision seemed right; as iPhones didn’t grab users attention until late 2011 and sales of the Blackberry was still increasing. Let’s not forget the epic reaction of Balmmer!
4. The Crashing Point
In two years, Blackberry fell from $20B in 2011 to $10B and didn’t stop falling. The Sales went down dramatically, and iPhone’s market share was increasing. So, what were their killing mistakes? Here we go:
A. Overlooking and Ignoring
Blackberry overlooked the market needs and they focused only on their enterprises customers they acquired and ignored billions of different customers. Moreover, they insisted not to ditch the QWERTY keyboard and hadn’t developed a full touchscreen until it was too late. It was dopey and unresponsive, and even their corporates customers hated it.
B. Conservative and maladaptive
“ RIM had the chance to innovate. They had great ideas, and all they had to do was break away from the suit and tie. But they didn’t. They were too confident and too conservative. A deadly combination in the tech world.”
Blackberry had their key boundaries; Portability, security and battery life. The OS imposed restrictions for app developers which made the market so tight. Furthermore, The OS itself was hard to update; as being widely exposed to the market would cause safety issues and consequently the loss of their corporates customers whom they were focusing on. Till once BBM crashed for four days straight and they lost their identity!
C. Arrogance and Overconfidence
Apple and Android took control over the market. Companies like Samsung and HTC was ready to provide devices for them. Late in 2012, Thorsten Heins the new hired CEO said:
We believe that BlackBerry cannot succeed if we tried to be everybody’s darling and all things to all people. Therefore, we plan to build on our strength.”
Unfortunately, they continued with the same approach and they learned nothing from their previous mistakes! After decades, they launched new phones and updated BlackBerry OS but it was too late until it no longer became competitive.
BlackBerry last device was Priv which was Android-based, and it also epically failed. Eventually, BlackBerry decided to stop making phones and sold the manufacturing licenses to other companies…
