BlackBerry’s Demise, An Eco-System Wasted?
So, it finally happened and the wait is over, BlackBerry is all set to go private in the hands of Fairfax Financial in $4.7bn sale. Though it is not final and Blackberry said it would continue to explore other options while negotiations with Fairfax continued. The company said it is expected to make a loss of up to $1bn after poor sales of its new BB10 handsets. The company on Monday announced that it had "signed a letter of intent agreement under which a consortium to be led by Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited has offered to acquire the company subject to due diligence".
We are here to look at the possible reasons why BlackBerry has come to this situation:
Reason 1
The reason BlackBerry failed was because they kept waiting for too long. They kept the same devices in competition for a very long time and eventually with the rise of Android and iOS, they fell flat and the BB10 release was pushed back too much for the worse to happen, which was followed by the terrible sales of BB10 devices.
Reason 2
Other major area which killed BlackBerry was their poor management, the people simply don't know that BlackBerry 10 is any different and the marketing doesn't spell it out in plain English. There was no such marketing strategy put on to raise the bar and to let people know what are they upto with the entire new Mobile OS. The BBM fiasco is the latest example of the poor management.
Reason 3
People are media driven today, everything that's been highlighted will be the first choice for them, they are uneducated when it comes to the market and to devices as a whole. They don't buy what fits their needs, but what media tell them. You type in Samsung over google, and get hundreds of positive results, and you google for BlackBerry, its all hate, falling shares, company's failed endeavors etc. So, media has a lot to play in BlackBerry's demise.
BlackBerry OS10 is a brilliant, and by far the most complete Mobile OS on launch, and it has the potential to be the best, but led by poor team of managers, it has come to this point where there is nothing going right for BlackBerry. Every thing that could have saved them was ruined by poor leadership, BBM, BB10 launch, Pricing, Marketing all are an apt example of continued poor execution.
Overall, we still hope that BlackBerry should exist there as a niche player and by going private, they can now work undercover and without much of negative publicity which it has been getting for last couple of years now. There would be no news of falling stocks now, and we keep our fingers crossed that we don't have an eco-system wasted.
We are here to look at the possible reasons why BlackBerry has come to this situation:
Reason 1
The reason BlackBerry failed was because they kept waiting for too long. They kept the same devices in competition for a very long time and eventually with the rise of Android and iOS, they fell flat and the BB10 release was pushed back too much for the worse to happen, which was followed by the terrible sales of BB10 devices.
Reason 2
Other major area which killed BlackBerry was their poor management, the people simply don't know that BlackBerry 10 is any different and the marketing doesn't spell it out in plain English. There was no such marketing strategy put on to raise the bar and to let people know what are they upto with the entire new Mobile OS. The BBM fiasco is the latest example of the poor management.
Reason 3
People are media driven today, everything that's been highlighted will be the first choice for them, they are uneducated when it comes to the market and to devices as a whole. They don't buy what fits their needs, but what media tell them. You type in Samsung over google, and get hundreds of positive results, and you google for BlackBerry, its all hate, falling shares, company's failed endeavors etc. So, media has a lot to play in BlackBerry's demise.
BlackBerry OS10 is a brilliant, and by far the most complete Mobile OS on launch, and it has the potential to be the best, but led by poor team of managers, it has come to this point where there is nothing going right for BlackBerry. Every thing that could have saved them was ruined by poor leadership, BBM, BB10 launch, Pricing, Marketing all are an apt example of continued poor execution.
Overall, we still hope that BlackBerry should exist there as a niche player and by going private, they can now work undercover and without much of negative publicity which it has been getting for last couple of years now. There would be no news of falling stocks now, and we keep our fingers crossed that we don't have an eco-system wasted.
BB10 maybe brilliant, but where is AirPlay, AirPlay Mirroring, Docking Support, lack of major apps/quality apps?
ReplyDeleteSo while the OS is good, BB's eco system is lacking.
Having a good OS these days is only part of the story.
BB10 was (or is) an eco system in the making, agree that it does lack some quality/useful apps, but that doesn't take away the probability that it would never have them. If the management would have been good enough inside BlackBerry, these would have taken into account already. Moreover, number of apps doesn't matter, can a 64GB iPhone store a million apps? No one seems to be getting this fact when they talk about number of apps in Android or iOS that how many they actually need.
ReplyDeleteBB phones will be remembered(if they go away) as pure business phone, they never commercialized much like android and iOS in terms of apps, but with BB10 when they actually tried to achieve that, it was the mismanagement that costed them empire.