Is Blackberry A Dead Company?

Making hundreds of millions of dollars, RIM is blowing other competitors out of the water with huge demands for their products. Skipping almost a decade to 2007, when RIM’s subscriber base jumps to 8 million and revenues double to over $3 billion. That same year, RIM becomes Canada’s most valuable company, surpassing Royal Bank of Canada’s market worth on the TSX. BlackBerry’s innovation is what started the company and continues to improve it. Canadian inventions like the first telephone, Java programming language and the famous Canadarm required great innovation, like BlackBerry, to make them prominent and to stand out from the rest of the world. In conclusion, BlackBerry’s bold features and breakthroughs in telecommunications have shaped our mobile experiences we have

According to the article “BlackBerry Posts Loss as Phones Go Unsold”, BlackBerry performs a poor performance. Business has a quarterly loss in 2013 for $965 million. The revenue had drop 45% that down to $1.57 billion from $2.86 billion compares with a year earlier. BlackBerry lost $248 million, or 47 cents a share, and analysts forecast 49 cents a share loss for the quarter ended August 31. The net loss is $235 million which excluding inventory charge and restructuring charges in the latest quarter. The cash position also down to $2.6 billion from $3.1 billion at quarter-end. Smartphone maker report a hefty operating loss of nearly $1 billion charge on inventory of unsold phones.

By the summer of 2012, the company that created the legendary BlackBerry, the “crackberry”, the use of which caused loyal users to become addicted now seemed to be on a collision course with oblivion. All signs pointed to Research in Motion, RIM, the company who at the beginning of the new century invented a handheld device that spread like wildfire, either being eviscerated for its parts or sold at fire sale prices.

In 2011, Apple increased their market share from 15.6% to 19% while RIM fell from 16% to 10.4% (Global Mobile Statistics, 2012). There are several different prospering smart phone brands that are negatively impacting RIM’s financial success. Not only are there a large number of competitors, but they are also well known companies such as Sony, Samsung, Google, and Apple to name a few. These are dominant companies in the electronics sector and all of which have large fixed costs so they must operate at economies of scale and produce near capacity. In turn, they have to sell all these products so that competition becomes more aggressive (Clegg pg.62). These companies all have the competitive advantage of offering their consumers another product lines whereas BlackBerry only offers phones and the new PlayBook which hasn’t been overly successful.

With worldwide demand for wireless handheld’s, RIM quickly identified the market potentials which saw them launching BlackBerry products with outstanding functions. Eventually, this lead to their explosive growth with revenue skyrocketing to $6 billion. However, a corporate giant cannot reach such heights without deploying thriving

RIM has had a rash of bad press due to failures in its email system as well as its product and management strategy. RIM has suffered two major disruptions of service in 2009 and 2011 that have tarnished the touted reliability standard that has been a standard marketing tool for BlackBerry devices. In 2011 alone, RIM stock dropped more than 50% due to a series of product errors and profit warnings. (Sharp & Prodhan, 2011)

RIM has a wide range of customers and established in many developed countries which can gain its brand image among its competitors. As RIM is responsible for innovation of high technology products, there is an effective R&D in RIM to make RIM stay competitive in smartphones industry. A strong relationship between RIM and its service providers showed one of RIM’s core capabilities.

Thus, improved carrier partnerships will help access carrier marketing and distribution channels allowing RIM to release products faster into the market. To tackle the previous quality and product release delays, RIM should partner with a third-party device manufacturer, while keeping product design in-house. Designing a mass consumer product line will take R&D and capital of which RIM can sufficiently supply. The Blackberry OS should be updated to a purpose–built platform migrating toward the consumer mass market, allowing the new consumers a similar scaled down corporate messaging service. RIM should make their OS more affordable for the consumer mass market to access, offsetting some of these costs to the corporate and government users. The core Blackberry messaging system should be designed to be accessible on other operating systems, increasing market cap and introducing potential revenue for both RIM and its partners while building a new customer base. RIM should make sure their business unit’s are cooperating efficiently, enabling them to respond quickly to market changes and competitor product

In the year 2007, Apple launched its first iPhone. The iPhone and the BlackBerry shared the ability to make calls and the ability to send messages. BlackBerry finally had its first direct competitor. During those years, RIM sold its BlackBerry(s) at a premium price. When Apple started selling their iPhone at a premium price as well RIM was taken aback. Though both smartphones are similar in nature, their contributions were very

This research analyzed BlackBerry Limited through the method of SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis it conducted was based on the facts that Blackberry had experienced a significant decrease of 38.5% in revenue during the fiscal year 2014. Compared to BlackBerry’s apparent weaknesses like poor financial performance and delayed product launches, it still holds strengths in terms of enterprise services, product design and device development. The positive outlook for smartphone and tablet markets will provide BlackBerry a great chance and motivation to develop new devices. Meanwhile, the cooperation with Foxconn is also a potential to drag up BlackBerry’s sales. However, threats such as intense competition from its

Smartphone market is fast-moving and very high competitive due to intense competition between two big smartphone producers, Apple and Samsung. At the beginning, Apple dominated this market solely by introducing a new innovative type of smartphone by Steve Jobs that has revolutionized people lifestyle and mobile industry. A few years after launching iPhone, a new fast following competitor, Samsung came into this market, and their sales have outperformed Apple from the year 2011 (According to Chart A1 in Appendix). In term of developing their product, Samsung has created its products by following Apple’s technology since the beginning of producing its smartphone, therefore there are many patent lawsuits between them. Since Steve Job passed away, Apple has continued to develop its core competence, which is an innovation of new type of smartphone that could help them to take back their market share from its rival, Samsung. Nonetheless, the competition between Apple and Samsung will still continue intensively in the future.

Research in Motion (RIM) was founded in 1984 and launched the BlackBerry smartphone in 1999, which made it one of the leaders in cell-phone innovation (RIM). In fact, for almost a decade, the BlackBerry was the product to have for people who were interested in cutting-edge sell phone technology. However, when Apple released the iPhone, it made a dramatic impact on BlackBerry's market. The recent release of a significant number of smartphone competitors has further impacted RIM's business. Despite these losses, RIM seemed to remain a viable competitor in the cell-phone industry, even if it had lost much of its market share. Some recent events have occurred that make RIM seem as if it may not be able to retain its current market share and may be in an unstoppable decline.

To continue to compete in the mass consumer market, RIM will need to design a specific product line that targets the masses and price competitively to make an impact in market share. This new line of Blackberry smart phone products must be price sensitive allowing a sales advantage. Revamping the Blackberry App Store will play a critical role in attracting new customers. Providing customers with a larger variety of applications is necessary to attract a larger younger non-corporate demographic group. Developing more applications will be a challenge, however creating greater financial initiatives for third-party application developers will help overcome this. To help further boost app development, RIM will establish partnerships with carriers to develop and sell apps, allowing carriers a mutual benefit from app revenue. Apple has removed the carrier revenue app benefits. RIM will re-introduce that opportunity to the carrier to strengthen relationships, along with carrier branded phones. The marketing of the new product line will be critical toward its success. Thus, improved carrier partnerships will

“Samsung is one of the leading brand names founded in Korea in 1969. It is the global leader in telecommunications, digital media technologies and semiconductors. In the present proposal we have selected Samsung brand in comparison to Apple Smartphone’s. With the advancement and passage of time it has gained significant position in market and has become a strong brand even more profitable than highest revenue brand Apple.”

BlackBerry is one of the leading providers of business smartphones. However, it does not change it thinking and the new