Upper level writing course. Need revision on this paper.

Running Head: BLACKBERRY 0

BlackBerry

Student Name

Univeristy

BlackBerry was the best mobile device in the market just a few years ago, although it may seem that it is a long time ago. Its ubiquity on Capitol Hill and Hill Street earned it a nickname CrackBrerry. In 2009, the Fortune Magazines named BlackBerry as the company with the fastest growth rate in the world, with an 84% increase in sales in a year (Gustin, 2017). However, the stock price of BlackBerry fell since then to 7%.

Today, the market share of BlackBerry has fallen considerably to 3%. This could be attributed to the dominance of the market by Google`s Android and Apple`s iPhone which have superior operating systems (Gustin, 2017) The decline of the BlackBerry is a case study and an example of the consequences of making wrong choices and lack of innovation in the market even for tech giants.

The reason why BlackBerry was not able to keep up with Google and Apple was as a result of the errors in their vision and strategy. When they dominated the corporate market, BlackBerry failed to realize that business customers; it is not they who would be drivers of the change in smartphones but the consumers. The app economy that arose also had a part to play in blindsiding BlackBerry as it led to people adopting the phones that are based on android and iPhone (Gustin, 2017) They also did not seem to foresee that smartphones would evolve from mere devices of communication to become hubs of entertainment from which one could also access the internet.

Even at a time when almost every user wanted to own a touchscreen because of better navigation and good video viewing, BlackBerry still maintained the production of full keyboard phones. The first touchscreen that BlackBerry made poorly imitated the iPhone (McNish, 2015). They were proud of the fact that their devices were email enabled. They failed to keep up with Google and Apple in making emailing and web browsing friendly to the consumer.

BlackBerry was founded in 1984 and introduced the first BlackBerry device in the year 1999. It was the best choice for the Wall Streeters who were obsessed with sending emails. It came up with push emails where messages could be received immediately as they were sent and so the user did not have to reload constantly to see new emails (McNish, 2015). It was the first mobile device to use the QWERTY keyboard, which in the following years led people knowing how to use both thumbs in typing in the phone to send emails.

As its popularity grew and more so among the business customers, it became the most valuable firm in Canada. As BlackBerry was comfortable as the leader of the corporate mobile market, the focus of Google and Apple was on the consumers, which they were correct in predicting that they would be the key drivers in the smartphone revolution (Gustin, 2017) This facilitated the fall of BlackBerry as Apple and Android rose. BlackBerry at last had to offer to sell itself at $4.7billion due to inability to stay at par with the competitors, a situation that was caused by wrong choice making and failure to innovate in the dynamic market.

There is a difference between companies that survive and those that do not, adaptability. Companies that are not able to adapt find themselves back sided by history (McNish, 2015). In August 2007, the BlackBerry smartphones had picked in shares at $236. However, the company was not aware that it was facing an inflexion, with the iPhone that Apple had introduced at the Moscone center of San Franciso in January of that year. BlackBerry made a mistake in that instead of making new innovations and strategizing on how to compete with Apple`s iPhone, they just allowed them to focus on the general customers who use smartphones while they themselves focused on corporate business where the government parastatals and companies owned by the government bought the devices for their employees. They underestimated the impact that that Apple`s iPhone would have on the market.

BlackBerry since its founding was a premier world innovator, making two-way pagers and devices that could send emails (Mouly, Bormes, Davidson, & Fan, 2017). However, they have missed so many opportunities of late, failing to realize the harm that could be done by iPhone, ignoring the threat posed by the competitors who offered lower prices in Asia and then most recently, throwing all the energy that was remaining into producing highly developed smartphones which did not make sense to consumers because they got to the market late and to make matters worse, had too little that they could offer.

BlackBerry did not keep up with consumerization that occurred in the business technology. Users began using iPhones which were more fun. In a short time, they preferred iPhones to BlackBerries at work. Companies were glad to save because they were burdened by having to buy phones for their employees, and so realizing that in using the phones they preferred the employees were happier, they allowed them to use the iPhones (Mouly, Bormes, Davidson, & Fan, 2017). BlackBerry realized too late that it needed to reach directly to the consumers, releasing the first touchscreen phone in the November of 2008. It struggled to come up with new phones in a bid to raise its market share once again but it was too late, its time was gone.

References

Gustin, S. (2017). The Fatal Mistake That Doomed BlackBerry | TIME.com. TIME.com. Retrieved 12 April 2017, from http://business.time.com/2013/09/24/the-fatal-mistake-that-doomed- blackberry/

McNish, J. (2015). Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Blackberry. Toronto, CA: HarperCollins.

Mouly, F., Bormes, G., Davidson, A., & Fan, J. (2017). How BlackBerry Fell. The New Yorker. Retrieved 12 April 2017, from http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-blackberry- fell