What Happened To Blackberry?

What Happened To Blackberry?

Amid a dwindling revenue base and shrinking profit, the company’s chief executive, Thorsten Heins (in case you don’t know, he took over the management of the company in 2011 after its founders were ousted by angry and disappointed investors who were no longer confident in their leadership) announced some days back that the company intends to shed 4,500 of its staff in a bid to cut costs and channel resources into areas that are likely to rescue the company from the throes of a takeover or a fold up. It is a figure that represents nearly half of its global workforce and it is coming barely months after another wholesale layoff in which the company parted ways with a lot of workers.

Perhaps, one of the areas which Heins and co. intend to channel their resources into is their popular Blackberry Messenger service. On September 21, Blackberry Ltd. released its Blackberry Messenger service on iOS and Android platforms and within two days it had recorded over 1.1 million downloads worldwide. It was a last-ditch effort to salvage the troubled company with its flagship service. The warm reception to the move from the smartphone community shows that there is still life in the Blackberry franchise after all, but that did not come without its own glitches as they were forced to halt the roll-out after an unofficial version of the BBM for Android app was posted online.



In a period that has seen Finnish giants, Nokia, sell its phone manufacturing unit to USA’s Microsoft, one can only but wonder if Blackberry is doomed to go the “Nokia way” or fizzle out like Motorola before it.



But what happened to Blackberry? A lot of things went wrong with Blackberry, but it all boils down to three major things.


Blackberry Messenger

Blackberry Messenger was once upon a time Blackberry’s numero uno feature. Years (or even months) ago, if you didn’t have a BBM pin, you were either not buoyant enough to get yourself a Blackberry and rub shoulders with the business elite or you were simply not interested the whole smartphone craze.



But today, it has become a waterloo of sorts for the Waterloo, Ontario-based firm. Previously touted as the world’s most flexible and secure social networking platform for messaging (which was a top draw for the phone’s customers until late 2011 or early 2012), the emergence of Whatsapp and other instant messaging services has ensured that it is no longer “if it’s not BBM, then you must be joking”. Smartphones from other companies now come with their own messaging platforms and there are thousands of mobile messaging apps available for download on the internet.



The fact that BBM is now available on rival platforms, iOS and Android might just spell the end of the road for Blackberry as smartphone makers. They could as well now bid goodbye to the smartphone industry and focus on developing software for other companies to use.



No variety whatsoever:

Blackberry made no efforts to treat its customers with variety, which they say is the spice of life, until the recent release of the Blackberry Q10 which came rather too late. It’s astonishing how Blackberry failed to learn from the very mistake that made rivals, Nokia, go under. Blackberry releases new phones constantly, but the problem with that is that the phones are not quite new. They may be brand-new, but nothing is new about them beyond the model name and the price. One new release after the other, we ended up with basically the same phone over and over again with barely-noticeable differences here and there. It’s like a James Bond franchise with the same plot and characters over and over again. Why would I want to replace my old Blackberry with a new one if the new one has exactly the same features and looks as the old one, but costs nearly twice as much?



Tecno, Samsung, Apple and others:

The emergence of the Hong Kong-based Tecno as major players in the budget smartphone niche has really put BB out of its element. Blackberry’s share of the smartphone market it once dominated is on an ever-increasing slide. In emerging markets, it is on a losing battle with budget smartphone makers Tecno (Africa) and Samsung (Asia). In developed markets, it is battling with high-end products from Samsung (again) and, of course, Apple. The acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone manufacturing unit by Microsoft piles further misery on the Canadian company as it could slide further down from its position (behind Samsung and Apple) to somewhere behind Microsoft-Nokia. Other companies like Huawei, LG, ZTE and Sony are lurking in the shadows and they are not far behind in the race.