THE RISE AND FALL OF BLACKBERRY

BlackBerry once dominated the smart phone market, selling more than 50 million devices at it's peak in 2011. It was primarily produced by a Canadian company named Research in Motion(RIM) and they had trends of millions of customers. RIM 's first smartphone took shape in its first 15 years of operation .

As a smart phone with unique features, BlackBerry commanded an astonishing 50% of the smart phone market in the US and 20% globally. In 2011, BlackBerry phones were almost everywhere but demand rapidly reduced and in 2016, BlackBerry stopped manufacturing its phones. So what really went wrong?

Two engineering students in 1984 ,Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin founded Research in Motion . Research in Motion initially engaged in random projects such as LED systems, Local network systems and a film editing system that won an Oscar in 1998. However, it was not until 2002 that the first ever BlackBerry was revealed.

With a unique brand preposition as a phone made for the worthy , classy and powerful individuals, BlackBerry took the world by storm. Owing a BlackBerry really said a lot about who you are as a person and was the new way of showing off your social status . The BlackBerry found a way to get people connected almost at all times which was a pretty new fate back then thus the nickname 'The crackBerry' as people got addicted to being connected .

Marketed primarily to the Business professionals, the BlackBerry had a simple design . Its full keyboard made it relatively easy for professionals to work outside their office as they could respond to mails,browse and text and do any other task that could be done with the computer in a more relatively easier way . That was not all .The feature that drew millions to the brand was the famous 'BlackBerry Messenger(BBM)'.

BlackBerry was able to figure out that people wanted to stay connected for longer periods without any restriction so the introduction of the BBM was the key component to BlackBerry's Success. The exclusiveness of the BBM gave some sort of pride to its users who saw themselves as modern and unique .Research in Motion really pulled the right strings as in 2007, the company made a staggering $3billion in revenue and $643 million as net income.

So with all the dollar signs and trends BlackBerry had absolutely nothing to worry about right?

'We are going to get rid all the 40 characters here,they have all these characters which are there whether you need them or not so we are going to get rid of all these buttons and make it one giant screen . A giant screen'. said Steve Jobs . These statement made by Steve jobs signaled the change in trends to come but did Blackberry pay heed?

The Iphone full screen touch device was a new innovation in technology that people have never seen before as BlackBerry was still using physical Keyboards at that point.

BlackBerry didn't view the iPhone as a competition because they (iPhone) didn't target the Business Market . So they continued their usual operations and released the BlackBerry flip in 2008 which was quickly followed by BlackBerry Storm(it's first touch device). These new models received some huge criticism for their sluggish performance but the BlackBerry phone was able to sell regardless because the iPhone was much more expensive than the traditional BlackBerry.

So for awhile ,BlackBerry was doing fine on the market but they underestimated how quickly the market was changing . iPhone released a new version every year and other brands like Samsung, Motorola also began to take root in the market . Failing to red the competition accurately , BlackBerry lost its Business minded customer base to services like the Playbook app. In June 2010 iPhone released its iPhone 4 and soon after its release, Apple phone sales surpassed that of BlackBerry for the second time but this time Apple stayed at the top.

Blackberry reacted slowly to change as their level of iteration was very slow . Android and Apple was the top priority of app developers as BlackBerry wasn't .The phone missed out on products that appealed to the customers most like front camera, font editors among others. This led to RIM's downfall as their market share began reducing at an unprecedented rate of 20% in 2009 to less than 5% in 2013. RIM finally released its competitive touch phone in 2013 but it was too late.

RIM thought its dedicated and loyal customers would probably sit around and wait for them but as we know , they didn't . Finally , in the last quarter of 2016, out of 432 million smartphones sold worldwide, only 207,900 were BlackBerry devices which brought down their market share to 0%.

In 2016 ,Chinese company TCL bought RIM which led to the company's departure from smartphone production market after 14 years it released it first phone . Today's BlackBerry runs on Android and its marketed specifically to people who want to enhance their privacy and security . Whether we are likely to see a new BlackBerry is not currently clear but BlackBerry, Despite its Demise will always remain the foundation of the smartphone industry.

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Writer : Joseph Obeng Junior

Editor ; Herbert Afriyie

Published by : Kelvin Mbir

Credit : Business Insider

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