From 'king of smartphones' to complete collapse, BlackBerry is a valuable lesson in technology history, still valuable today.
The Glorious Decade
BlackBerry was founded in 1984 as Research In Motion (RIM) by Canadian engineering students Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin. The company initially focused on enterprise projects, including an LED lighting system for GM, a local area network for IBM, and a film editing system.
In 1989, Canadian telecommunications company Rogers contracted RIM to research the Mobitex network, a specialized system for text messaging. As a result, RIM quickly became an expert in the field of mobile text messaging. By 1996, the company launched its first two-way pager – the RIM-900 Inter@ctive Pager.
The big turning point came in 2000, when RIM introduced the BlackBerry 957, its first mobile phone, equipped with push-email and Internet access, laying the foundation for the development of the BlackBerry smartphone line later.
For a decade, BlackBerry became a symbol of the business world and celebrities thanks to its high security and work-optimized features on its classic hardware phones. Even with the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and the arrival of Android OS in 2008, BlackBerry maintained its dominance until 2010. However, this was also the beginning of the decline of this brand.
Underestimating competitors and being slow to innovate
As Apple and Google roll out consumer-friendly phones with intuitive interfaces and compelling app stores, BlackBerry remains loyal to its enterprise customer base.
The strategy of focusing on the most profitable segment at that time was not wrong, but BlackBerry missed the individual user segment - the customers who later became the lifeblood of every smartphone company.
As businesses change their policies to allow employees to use personal phones at work, it is inevitable that BlackBerry will gradually be replaced by iPhone and Android devices.
In 2009, under pressure from the Apple App Store and Android Market, BlackBerry launched the BlackBerry App World app store. However, a poor app ecosystem, slow updates, and the need to reboot the device after each upgrade – a process that is not fast at all – left BBOS falling further behind its competitors.
Even BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), the company's most popular app, has been underutilized. BlackBerry has missed out on growing its user base while third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp have quickly taken over the market.
In early 2017, BlackBerry's mobile phone market share officially reached 0.0%. By September of the same year, the company announced its withdrawal from the hardware segment. And on January 4, 2022, BlackBerry officially stopped supporting and shut down all service servers, marking the end of the era of "BlackBerry" business phones.
The collapse of BlackBerry is one of the technology industry's classic lessons, emphasizing the importance of adaptability to market changes.
Conclude
BlackBerry’s demise is not just a failure of a company, but also a reminder of the importance of innovation, adaptation, and long-term vision. In a world that is constantly changing, stagnation means being left behind. Companies like Apple and Samsung understood this and kept innovating, while BlackBerry became a testament to the price of being slow.
Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/vi-sao-de-che-blackberry-sup-do-bai-hoc-nao-cho-cac-cong-ty-cong-nghe-2380510.html
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