Blackberry Downfall

BLACKBERRY DOWNFALL

TOPICS THAT WILL BE COVERED

Introduction : About the Company and Founders of RIM(RESEARCH

IN MOTION)

How BlackBerry came to existence

How BlackBerry Captured Smartphone Market around the World

First Success of RIM – The BlackBerry “Pearl” series

Reasons that led to The Downfall of BlackBerry

Conclusion

RIM(RESEARCH IN MOTION)

Blackberry was designed and developed by a Canadian based company called Research In Motion (RIM) in 1999.

RIM is a Canadian multinational company that develops telecommunication and wireless equipment'sRIM also provides secure and high reliability software for industrial applications and mobile device management (MDM)

BlackBerry's software and hardware products are used worldwide by various government's agencies and by car makers and industrial plants throughout the world, much of this activity being unseen by the public.

RIM is headquartered

in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

It was founded by Mike Lazaridis and

Douglas Fregin in 1984

Fregin later left the

company in 2007.

In 1992 Lazaridis hired Jim Balsillie, and Lazaridis and

Balsillie served as co-CEOs until January 22, 2012

In November 2013, John S. Chen took over as CEO

BLACKBERRY

The device is known as Blackberry because its black button keys on the black color phone looks like Blackberry fruit seed.

In 1999, RIM introduced the BlackBerry 850 pager.

The device could receive push email from a Microsoft Exchange Server using its complementary server software, BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

How BlackBerry Came to Existence

This feature set the stage for future enterprise-oriented products from the company

BlackBerry Pager set the stage for future enterprise-oriented products from the company

The first Blackberry Smartphone “BlackBerry 957” was launched in April 2000

How BlackBerry Captured Smartphone Market

The BlackBerry OS platform and BES continued to increase in functionalityThe incorporation of encryption and S/MIME support helped BlackBerry devices gain increased usage by governments and businessesDuring fiscal 1999-2001, total assets declared in the RIM's balance sheet grew eight-fold due to massive capacity expansion.

RIM soon began to introduce BlackBerry devices aimed towards the consumer market as well

So now Blackberry was not just limited to corporate and govt officials

RIM Decides To Go GLOBAL - Introduction of the Pearl series

RIM introduces BlackBerry Pearl 8100 —the first BlackBerry phone to include multimedia features such as a camera. The introduction of the Pearl series was highly successfulBlackberry introduces two more versions Curve 8300 series and Bold 9000

Extensive carrier partnerships fuelled the rapid expansion of BlackBerry users

globally in both enterprise and

consumer markets.

DOWNFALL

INTERNAL FACTORS

Blackberry suffered the loss of many key figures in its management, during its attempts to revive its market share. Jim Balsillie, the co-CEO in 2012, quit the board of directors. Mike Lazaridis was against Jim’s idea to shift Blackberry’s focus to its instant-messaging software (BBM)

CEO Thorsten Heins decides to kill the idea due to pressure from Mike Lazaridis Founder Mike Lazaridis, was against the launching of Blackberry’s touchscreen phone, Blackberry Z10

There is a certain culture we follow at RIM and Z10

would not fit into it. (Basically they were against

launching a phone that did not have keyboard. They

believed that, keyboard was the signature feature of

Blackberry devices)

BLACKBERRY WAS FACING INNOVATIVE COMPETITIONApple Introduces iPhone in 2007

According to Mike Lazaridis “It looked like Apple Mac computer stuffed into a cellphone”

The iPhone operating system took up 700 MB of memory and used two processors.

BlackBerry, the device ran on one processor and used 32 MB of memory

iPhone had a fully Internet-capable browser “SAFARI” which was missing in BlackBerry

RIM, it was using an elementary browser that limited data usage.

Wireless companies like AT&T Inc had started introducing DATA packages to iPhone users.

Users could not take full advantage of DATA package on BlackBerry Phones

FAILURE OF IDENTIFYING CONSUMER AND FUTURE TRENDS Apple had signed an exclusive deal with its competitor AT&T and therefore Verizon

Wireless was frozen on iPhones.

Verizon executives approached RIM in June 2007, and asked if RIM could develop “iPhone Killer”

In the past RIM’s smartphones had been a huge hit for Verizon Wireless

Verizon also agreed, it would back the U.S. launch with a massive marketing campaign The product was the BlackBerry Storm – It hit the U.S. markets just before Thanksgiving in 2008

It was RIM’s first touchscreen device and was difficult to operate. The device had a single processor and was slow and buggy RIM had failed to deliver the “iPhone Killer” Verizon Wireless decided to abandon the storm

campaign. Verizon now turned to Google Inc. and its new operating system, Android

Android operating smartphones started to steal market share from Palm and Microsoft and eventually RIM

Consumer Demand for Apps in Smartphones was IncreasingBlackBerry failed to anticipate the emergence of the “app economy,” which drove massive

adoption of iPhone and Android-based devices

Consumers no longer cared much for battery life or security features, they cared about apps. Apple and Google’s operating systems were built for making it easy on external programmers to create

apps. BlackBerry apps built on old programming languages were uglier and stifled creativity

RIM also exerted strict control over developers, costing BlackBerry trending apps such as Instagram and Tumblr

CONSECUTIVE FAILURES OF NEW PRODUCTS

RIM was now focusing on building a device like Apple’s successful iPad tablet

Developers at RIM continued to face difficulty with integrating the tablet’s system with the smartphones, as both had a differ operating system

This delayed the release of RIM’s PlayBook

It proved to be “an awkward accessory” to RIM’s smartphones, and lacked e-mail, contacts and apps

RIM’s entry to Tablet & The Failure of PlayBook

OTHER FACTORS

Google makes its Android operating system available for free

BlackBerry was unable to drop prices to retain the market share it was losing to AndroidAndroid was made free to any handset maker causing BlackBerry to lose orders massively

With RIM’s new products all failing, it continued to lose market share to Apple and Android phonesGrowing demands of customers who wanted to surf the Internet on their phones, RIM planned to release its 4G phone

This was the BlackBerry 10, which was another product that was delayed

Thus 2011 became a turning point for RIM, with its stock price falling from $69 (Canadian) in February to less than $15 by the year’s end

CONCLUSIONThe main reasons for the demise of BlackBerry was probably its unwillingness to

let go of its key successes such as its signature keyboard devices, lack of innovation and failure to anticipate how the smartphone revolution was going to

carry forward. It was “more concerned with protecting what it already had instead of conquering new lands”

(Savov, 2016)