Has Blackberry lost its edge?

Blackberry (name chosen after the resemblance of the keyboard to blackberry fruit), a Canadian based company formerly known as RIM started operating in 1999. The biggest innovation at that time was the e-mail pager introduced that year. Mobile internet back in 1999 wasn’t available so widely and cheap as it is today, so this was a real revolution on the mobile market. Second biggest invention of Blackberry in 1999 was the full QWERTY keyboard. So what’s happened during those years that in 2013 Blackberry is facing bankruptcy. Why bankruptcy? Here are some facts:

1.) Nearly 1 billion dollars of loose is predicted for the year 2014.
2.) Firing nearly 4,500 employees
3.) The new high-end phone Z10 which doesn’t sell in requested quantities
4.) Only 3,7 million phones has been sold in the third quarter of 2013 compare to over 6 million in the second quarter

The savior strategy which was released in the beginning of 2013 (New Blackberry OS with new phone Z10) was really promising. But as it turn out after few months this wasn’t so successful after all. In my opinion introducing a touch screen phone five years after first android phone and six years after the first iPhone is a bit too late. The appworld (Blackberry’s appstore) started operating this year with only few thousand apps, when Apple’s appstore has over 800,000 apps with over 40 billion downloads and Android Google Play has now more than one million applications with 50 billion downloads.

Why so late?
The first strategy of Blackberry was to get to corporate client with the email pager. For over a decade it was a very good idea and a very successful strategy. And when iPhone was introduced to the world Blackberry thought that this millstone step in mobile technology doesn’t concern their corporate clientele. Today everyone can have an e-mail client on their phone and with a cheap internet plans from the mobile network operator nobody wants the old e-mail pager from Blackberry. It’s worth to mention that study shows that in 2013 over 45% of internet users access web via mobile devices.

What’s the future?
It’s really hard to say at the moment as the new CEO replaced on November 4th 2013 didn’t reveal his strategy yet. All we know that there was several proposals from technology companies for various Blackberry assets which was rejected by the board members. In my opinion without any big vision like the e-mail pager back in 1999 nothing will save this company from bankruptcy but as the new CEO said “We are committed to reclaiming our success”. So all we need to do is waiting for the new strategy which may someday lead again Blackberry to the point when it was called “CrackBerry” (reference to the addictiveness of crack cocaine).