How did Blackberry fail?
- ZarcMan
- Aug 8, 2020
- 4 min read
In one word - Keypad.
In short - their refusal to gauge the weight of their competition. They underestimated two major forces to reckon with - a hardware company with tons of manufacturing experience(Apple) and an open-source mobile software that any company could use with very little hassle(Android).
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Long version
There have been business case studies,debates, and then some more to understand how an industry leader with seemingly no parallels fell from grace to being the most ridiculed smartphone maker.
To understand this - you need to understand ‘Complacency’. And to speak about it in hindsight is probably the easiest thing to do, so I don’t blame BB all that much. But yeah, like many many other industry-observers and experts have pointed out, Blackberry dug their own grave.
So how bad did they underestimate their competition? Well clearly not as bad an Nokia, ahem…
When Steve Jobs walked on to the 2007 apple keynote and declared that Apple was making a phone, he changed the mobile phone market for decades to come. I was in college then and was using a Nokia N70, which was supposed to be a big deal in those days. But one look at the first iPhone made my phone look like a fossil.
Steve Jobs clearly mentioned why he thought it was a good idea - removal of the static portion/keyboard/trackpad of the phone. This idea was not new, many folks like Samsung, Moto and Palm had already tested waters on this - but Apple’s implementation was just supreme. And they used their marketing muscle to push the phone to their existing iMac and iPod consumer base.
Google quickly caught up by acquiring a half-baked OS called Android. The immediate takeaway from that was not that it was a poor OS compared to Apple’s polished iOS, the main takeaway for a lot of people(like me) was the potential that android wielded. The other one was the price. The open source OS was being sold at attractive prices, quickly gathering emerging markets. It is worth mentioning here that Google did the right thing by taking Apple’s way. Their initial plan was to copy Blackberry and beat them at their own game(which was nearly impossible). A game-changing decision by google.
Manufacturers like HTC, Motorola,Samsung and LG lapped up the open source OS. These were tremendously ambitious Koreans and Taiwanese who knew their stuff. BB should have looked up and taken notice. Well, they didn’t.
Now
Higher end market - Expensive iPhones with free and paid apps Lower end market - Cheap android phones with free apps
The ball started rolling from there on. The below events are not necessarily in chronological order.
Blackberry was too proud to openly accept that their market share of business-users will soon look elsewhere for better usability. They thought their customer base and interlock with business was too robust and strong to be brought down by a flashy music-player maker or a dodgy Operating system that will probably attract kids.
They started making touch phone with far less responsive screens and ridiculously high prices. No real change in design or approach in spite of failures in the form of Storm and Torch.
The keyboards were fast getting outdated and Blackberry made very little effort to reach out to that side of users who preferred a smooth, advanced touch-keypad
Applications for the other operating systems started pouring in with regulated development for Apple and unregulated, wildfire development in case of Android. BB was already starting to look dated. Most of these apps were not useful or even relevant, but their did the trick - bring more users who wanted fresh, snazzy phones that could do useless stuff.
BB now got desperate and started publishing ads about how cool their phones are. They started showing business users dancing with teenagers to show that BB phones can do social media. They still didn’t drop prices.
Apple introduced the iPad. Created a smaller, niche segment for users wanting a bigger screen and reading capabilities. Android played catch-up(Still is, as of 2020). Blackberry introduced a rushed-up playbook that fails miserably. A whole market segment is entirely lost for BB. Playbooks were sold at throw-away prices to clear stock. Ouch!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/02/22/rim-tries-again-with-playbook-fails-to-impress/#a05c17f3c56d
Android took their form factor and UI to a next level thanks to phones like Titan and Note. Video players like MX Player made Android phones the ultimate cheap media consumption devices with kickass features like touch scrolling and seek. Samsung pushed the barrier now with a re-invented stylus. BB was now clueless to where they are left. BB still refused to drop prices.
Small to medium businesses started moving their user base to Apple thanks to popular demand. Apple happily beefed up security and extended business applications. BB was the major company to take a hit. BB still refused to drop prices
RIM crumbled under business pressure and was left to die. News units published this like an apocalypse story. BB email servers stories were splashed all over the internet in 2011–12 season.
Now independent contributors, contractors and a few major companies moved to Apple and Android. BB finally realized that it was too late.
So as you can see, a company like BB didn’t fall in a day. It was an accumulation of multiple different changes and evolution of the smartphone industry itself.
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