The Rise And Fall Of BlackBerry
blackberry once trained as king of the
smartphone selling more than 50 million
units at its peak in 2011 the Canadian
telecom company was originally named
research in motion and had tens of
millions of customers
it started out creating pagers and
handsets but the first iteration of the
smartphone complete with iconic keyboard
took shape within its first 15 years at
one time blackberry controlled 50
percent of the smartphone market in the
US and 20 percent globally in the mid ox
Blackberry phones were everywhere but
demand rapidly declined and in 2016
blackberry stopped manufacturing its own
phones so what happened in 1984 two
Canadian engineering students Mike
Lazaridis and Douglas fraggin formed
Research In Motion at first the company
dabbled mostly in random projects an LED
system for GM a local network for IBM
and even a film editing system that won
an Oscar in 1998 in 1989 the Canadian
phone company Rogers contracted rim to
work on its mobile text network a system
specifically designed for messaging
giving rim a leg up as an early expert
in mobile messaging fast forward to 1996
when rim created its first two-way pager
and for the next few years the company
iterated on that design gradually adding
features like a color display Wi-Fi
instant messaging and web browsing in
2002 the company unveiled its first
model that could be called a phone in
2006 rim added the trackball so users
could scroll around the screen
BlackBerry figured out a way to make its
phone indispensable to the wealthy and
powerful and having it really meant
something about who you were as a person
it was a status symbol and that's where
we got that name CrackBerry people were
almost addicted to it and addicted to
that feeling of always being connected
the BlackBerry had a simple design an
easy learning curve and was clearly
marketed to business professionals the
full keyboard made it possible for them
to work outside the office they could
respond to emails text browse the web
basically anything they might need to do
at a computer and there was one other
beloved feature blackberry messenger the
bbm messaging service was a key
component of BlackBerry's success as
well because they figured out really
early on that people wanted to have an
instant connection to people they wanted
to be able to message back and forth
without limits and being able to bbm
also added you to that really exclusive
club of blackberry only users this
convenience paired with inclusivity paid
off by 2007 the company was pulling in
more than three billion dollars in
revenue with a net income of 631 million
at that point in time
blackberry had all these government
contracts and big business deals and
those deals in turns burden were
consumer adoption so at that point
blackberry was just dominating the US
market so with all those contracts and
dollar signs the company had nothing to
worry about
right the problem with them is really
sort of in the bottom 40 they're it's
it's this stuff right here they all have
these keyboards that are there whether
you need them or not to be there what
we're gonna do is get rid of all these
buttons and just make a giant screen a
giant screen the iPhone was something
consumers had never seen before it the
iPhone was a full touchscreen device and
that was a huge leap and innovation at
that point for the mobile industry
blackberry was still using physical
keyboards at that point but the iPhone
didn't kill rim
it just signed its death warrant
blackberry didn't view the iPhone as
competition since it didn't cater to the
business market so it carried on
business as usual rim released the
blackberry flip phone in 2008
quickly followed by the blackberry storm
its first touchscreen device the storm
was reviewed and trashed by critics who
said it was a definite letdown because
of the phone sluggish performance and
bugginess but blackberry phone still
continued to sell for a few reasons the
iPhone was more expensive than the
blackberry and exclusive to 18 t until
2011 forcing customers in the US either
switch providers or pick a new phone and
very simply people just didn't want to
give up their keyboards so for a while
blackberry was fun but RIM
underestimated how quickly the
smartphone market was changing there was
a new updated iPhone every year and
other smartphones like the Motorola
Droid began to hit shelves rim tried to
keep up it rolled out innovative new
devices like the PlayBook tablet and
torch but the devices were not well
received the PlayBook even shipped
without an email app which made it
useless to BlackBerry's business minded
customer base in June 2010 came
BlackBerry's death-rattle with the
release of the iPhone 4 soon after its
release Apple's phone sales surpassed
blackberry for the second time but this
time they stayed there blackberry was
slow to change its company ethos was
built around designing a great product
that just worked and iterating on it
slowly to that and they would add small
features over time but they weren't
shooting for big sweeping changes that
would shock and delight consumers it
wasn't the fact that there was no
well-established BlackBerry app store
although that was big
comparatively Android and Apple were
more top of mind for app developers
blackberry wasn't the phones missed out
on a bunch of features that appealed to
consumers like front and back cameras
these shortcomings ultimately led to
rims downfall rims global market share
began a downward spiral going from 20%
in 2009 to less than 5% in 2012 by the
time rim finally released a speck
competitive touchscreen phone in 2013 it
was just too late that same year rim
officially changed its name to
blackberry blackberry thought its loyal
customers would wait around for it
spoiler they didn't at this point people
were locked into either iPhone or
Android and in the last quarter of 2016
out of 432 million smartphones sold
worldwide only 200 7900 or blackberry
devices which officially made rim
smartphone market share 0% and in 2016
Chinese consumer electronic company TCL
essentially bought the BlackBerry phone
brand which led to their departure from
the smartphone market 14 years after the
release of its first phone but the
phone's live on sort of introducing the
new blackberry classic with more
powering to
than ever before the deal was for TCL to
design and manufacture blackberry
hardware while the BlackBerry company
provides the software today's blackberry
phones still have the iconic keyboard
but run on android not the BlackBerry OS
giving users their beloved App Store and
much more customization options the
phones are still marketed to a specific
type of user people who want enhanced
privacy and security features with the
marketing materials spotlighting the
phone security protections and battery
life but the latest BlackBerry phone the
key to was released in 2018 these days a
new model comes along every year and
2019 has come and gone without any new
BlackBerry's whether we see a new
BlackBerry anytime soon or not the
phones will always be a brick in the
foundation of smartphone history a
fitting place for a company so set in
its ways that it cemented its own demise
