Blackberry were once the creme of the smartphone crop, but in recent years they’ve struggled to keep up, and with the latest bout of bad press, and poor sales, Blackberry may not have much time left!
Research in Motion, the Canadian owners of Blackberry, make great smartphones for corporate use.
I just want to get that out of the way before anyone claims I’m ‘Berry Bashing’, and believe me I wouldn’t want to get the average British Blackberry user angry!, but the very aspects which make the company and it’s products great could be their downfall.
Blackberry was established back in 1999 and quickly made a name for themselves as the go to handheld for business use. The main reason’s Blackberry were are good for business was the inclusion of email on a smartphone and the security the encrypted service provided.
After 2007, when Apple and later Google released their iPhone and Android smartphone platforms, Blackberry should have followed suit and kept up! But they didn’t, the Canadian giant became complacent, lazy and happy with providing handsets to their corporate contractors.
Fast forward to 2011 and Blackberry are flailing in the water trying to keep up! But worst of all are the warning signs RIM are giving off which prove they are in trouble!
Blackberry Playbook
The Blackberry playbook was the first huge push to capture the publics imagination, but it looks to be failing fast.
What could have been a great tablet, had features locked and services rendered useless unless used with a Blackberry phone, features as basic as e-mail!
Then there was the choice of name!
Playbook may be a great name for the public, but if you’re going to make the tablet work with encrypted systems and allow certain services to only work through a Blackberry cell phone it looks as though you’re really making a tablet for business and corporate use.
Perhaps RIM should have made 2 tablets the Workbook and the Playbook?
Gizchina News of the week
Redundancies at Research in Motion
After the poor sales of the Playbook, and Blackberry’s ever decreasing market share, RIM announced in July they would make 2000 employees redundant.
Worst still COO Don Morrison of RIM decided the layoff’s were as good a time as any to announce his retirement, effectively abandoning the sinking ship!
Last ditch attempt!
One of the biggest alarm bells for Blackberry’s demise has to be the decision for RIM to launch not 1 or 2 new smartphones this year but 7!
7 new Blackberry phones! Is that how much confidence they have in their designs? They need 7 new Blackberrys to go after 1 new iPhone 5, and and hand full of top of the line Samsung, HTC, LG and Sony Android phones!
Throwing everything you have at the competition is a desperate move, obviously decided by a very desperate company!
London Riots
In the current social climate it would be impossible to write about Blackberry and not mention the continuing riots that are spreading across Britain.
Police tackling the rioters have claimed that the ringleaders controlling these thug’s attacks are using Blackberry’s encrypted messaging service to prevent the police from ‘listening in’!
Of course to say the riots are the fault of RIM and Blackberry is ludicrous, but the stigma that now a Blackberry phone is a thug, or hooligans choice of smartphone may be enough to turn off would-be Blackberry buyers!
If Apple iPhones are for the trendy hipsters, Google Android phones are for the more tech savvy and Blackberry phones are for the young hooligans who throw bricks at police and burn peoples homes, which phone will you choose when you head to the store?
