There are many advancement in technologies especially
in mobile phones. It all started in 3rd April 1973 which is when the
first mobile phone was introduced by Motorola. Now there are so many mobile
phone brands Samsung, Apple, Motorola, Vivo, Xiaomi, etc. But we all have
forgotten one major brand in mobile phone market that had 20% of global market
share and went down nearly to 0% which is BlackBerry.
In this we are going to see the rise and fall of BlackBerry and how fast the
technology changed during these years.
For that we have to go way beyond to history of
BlackBerry
The
History Of BlackBerry
In 1980’s, Research in motion was created by Mike
Lazardis and Douglas Fregin which focused on wireless data technology. During 1997
the company was publically traded in Toronto Stock Exchange. In 1996, the company
introduced its Interactive Pager which was the first two way messaging pager in
the size of a bar of soap. The Blackberry name came from the Qwerty keyboard
which has resemblance to the seed of Blackberry.
In mid-2000, BlackBerry introduced its mobile phone
BlackBerry Pearl which had many multimedia features like camera, messenger. At
that time service provider’s charges for each text message but BlackBerry used
the internet data to send messages.
BlackBerry used Gorilla Marketing where their employee
would go to conference and meet the person who uses junky laptop and offer them
BlackBerry Phone for free for one month which will make the users attached to
it and the device will become a necessity.
These things made BlackBerry very popular and the
Blackberry Phones were everywhere. So this made BlackBerry to have 20% global
Market share in mobile phones market and 50% in the United States Market.
A
Competitor Entry
It was the year 2007, yes it was the year when iPhone
was introduced which was a phone, minicomputer, an internet browser, an email
machine. After the announcement the founder of BlackBerry Mike Larzardis quoted
that “This is impossible, the network wouldn’t be able to carry this, and it is
illogical that anyone would propose this.”
So the thing is that Mike was right, Apple faced many
lawsuits for products that didn’t work properly. But after that iPhones began
to work. The release of iPhone was really successful because of its interactive
and multi touch capacity which helped the user creativity. By the time
BlackBerry realized what a serious threat it was they were already lagging
behind. To increase the problem Android phones like HTC also came to market and
push the barriers.
This was new for BlackBerry that previously it didn’t had
so many competitors. The competitors were Sony Ericson, Nokia and Motorola. BlackBerry
was set as premium mobile phone brand
The iPhone had many things than BlackBerry a big
screen, an interactive touch, multimedia playback but the main thing was the
browser which differs them. BlackBerry had smaller screens to render image. But
iPhone had nearly doubled the screen size and also the touch which felt so good
for the users. So iPhone won the game.
BlackBerry
Fights Back
At this time BlackBerry was doing really good they
were expanding to India and other parts of the world. After the iPhone got
released, BlackBerry reacted and released its new phone with bigger screen but
has the same QWERTY keyboard and a slide down tab.
But overall their operating system remains the same. So
BlackBerry reacted to this and changed their Java based OS to New OS which was
built in the language called QNX. But the developers didn’t like their new OS, they
developed apps for Android and Apple because they can have much larger
exposure.
In another attempt to save BlackBerry, they changed their
OS to Android OS for their new phones. This made them to jump equal to their
competitors, unfortunately they were no different from their competitors. At
the same time they also built their software company which mainly focuses on
security and enterpriser software. Within span of a year they gone to 0.01%
global market share which is 0.
Conclusion
We would think Android or Apple killed Blackberry. No
they killed themselves, by not modifying their technology and not innovating by
producing the same phone model again. They had some improvements in their phone
but not as the leap made by Apple or Android. To add to this their executives
also doesn’t have vision how the market or future would be.
Jim Balsillie former CEO of BlackBerry in 2010 quoted
that “There may be so many apps for iPhone but only app you need is your
browser.” This shows their lack of vision in the market.
Their leadership failed in many aspects
1. They failed to realize that non-business consumer
would eventually drive the market.
2. They reacted poorly for the New App economy.
3. They didn’t foresee that mobile devices would evolve
from simple communication device to mobile entertainment device.
So in the early stages of Android when they saw the
iPhone they realized that touch is the future and changed their design from
keyboard to touch, BlackBerry could also have done this.
In tech world, when you realize the mistake you have made,
you will already be a follower.
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