The Rise and Fall of Blackberry

hi welcome to another ColdFusion video the story of blackberry epitomizes the tech industry meteoric Rises and catastrophic Falls disruptive technology changes the market landscape so quickly and drastically that are both creates and swallows billion-dollar companies blackberry went from almost 20% of global mobile market share to almost zero in a matter of a few short years let's take a look at the rise and fall of blackberry you are walking ColdFusion TV [Music] to start the BlackBerry history we have to go back to the 1980s in Canada blackberry originated in Canada as the company called research and motion or ha a.m. for short in 1984 two engineering students Mike Lazaridis and Douglas friggin start research in motion early on the company worked on wireless communications network technology in 1996 research and motion introduces the first two-way messaging pager and by 1997 the company was publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange one of the first products to carry the BlackBerry name was another pager with a full QWERTY keyboard which later became synonymous with the brand in fact the name BlackBerry comes from the shape and feel of the keys on their keyboard this pagers main strength was the devices integration with emails this gave business users an executive sales reps the first easy-to-use on-the-go access to email and this was a huge deal and in here blackberry would find its market the next model would integrate telephone capabilities something that hadn't ever really been done well before at the time in the 1990s does a race to dominate the newly developed handheld space palm Ericsson and IBM were all in on the game even Apple tried with the Apple Newton and a stylus the latter ended up being a disaster because the software wasn't up to scratch BlackBerry looked at this market from a very different point of view they were going to innovate what none of the big players in the 1990s realized was that bandwidth was very limited for data transmissions Mike the founder of Research In Motion did understand this limitation within the BlackBerry devices he had created an instrument that distributed the bits of data communications in such a way that it wouldn't overload the networks so while others were charging massive amounts of money for something that barely worked over a network BlackBerry devices just worked this combined with a keyboard that could be effectively used with sums made blackberry have the clear advantage another part of BlackBerry's success was their guerilla marketing blackberry employees would often go to conferences and spotted business people who are using chunky laptops the BlackBerry employees would give these people a blackberry to try for free for a month as the business users replaced their laptops of blackberries this created massive word-of-mouth marketing and soon the devices became a necessity and took over the business world the device was just so much more practical than other phones at the time the hype of the BlackBerry soon carried through down to non-business users and BlackBerry decided to target them to integrating more features for the everyday user the BlackBerry Pearl was their step into this new space it featured multimedia elements such as a camera and came with a new service called blackberry messenger in the mid-2000s service providers typically charge per text message the most common form of messaging back then but blackberry messenger used Internet data to transfer cheap and quick messages much like iMessage and iPhones today back then it was nothing short of revolutionary it allowed people to escape their text message limited plans this innovation made blackberry very popular and soon enough blackberry was everywhere at its peak the company had 20% share of global smartphone market and 50% of the United States market it was a Goliath in the tech world its users ranged young and old professional and casual the company's position in the market was so strong so how did it go all so wrong it was the year 2007 George W Bush was president the first Transformers movie was released and Windows Vista was still fresh Steve Jobs went on the stage at Macworld to talk about a new product Apple was working on it was a phone a mini computer a web browser and an email machine all in the one device meanwhile in Canada founder of blackberry Mike Lazaridis looked at the announcement that Steve Jobs had just made and said quote this is an impossibility with the networks wouldn't be able to carry this it's illogical that anyone would even propose this end quote the thing was Mike was right the iPhone drop cause and Apple face lawsuits for a product that simply just didn't work properly but then after the initial setbacks the iPhone began to work and Mike became very wrong within that two year period the iPhone had taken the world by storm it's interactive the multi-touch capacitive touchscreen captured the imagination of users and developers by the time blackberry realized what a serious threat that this was they were already followers it said to the problem Android phones like HTC also started to hit the market pushing the barriers and increasing competition this was new for blackberry as previously they didn't have many strong competitors there was Sony Ericsson Nokia and Motorola to you but blackberry was set above as a premium mobile phone brand almost overnight that all changed the iPhone did many things better than Blackberry a bigger screen very interaction by capacitive touch but a multimedia playback and a bit of camera which is some but it was the browser that really differentiated the two blackberry had a much smaller screen to render images limiting the way that the layout could be displayed would nearly double the screen size the iPhones showed its competitor out of the water allowing more ways to interact with the page not only this but most interactions with the device just simply felt more natural too but blackberry wouldn't go down a fight contrary to popular belief at this time blackberry was still doing well they're expanding in Indonesia India and other parts of the world they were a huge company and even had to build new factories to keep up with demand once the iPhone got its original Network problem solved blackberry reacted the next phone would have a much larger screen while still paying homage to the QWERTY keyboard that made them famous this time utilizing a slide down tab the issue at the core of blackberry was that it was trying to compete in a dynamic market by changing its physical features all the while its operating system remained relatively unchanged blackberry soon realized this and reacted by changing their Java based OS with a new OS built in a language called Qi and X but unfortunately developers simply didn't like Q and X they opted to make apps for Android and Apple instead because they could have exposure to much more of the market ultimately it was a destructive feedback loop for blackberry less third-party apps meant fewer people wanting to buy BlackBerry devices meaning developers had fewer people to sell their apps to T which in turn meant that developers would produce fewer apps for blackberry and the destructive loop continues in the space of a year blackberry had dropped from the most popular mobile brand to third in another attempt to save blackberry they changed the operating system yet again but now they jump ship to their competitors by using Android OS but unfortunately this move demonstrated that blackberry was no longer different from any other Android phone and held no edge in this newly developing market so naturally they pivoted to becoming a software company these days the company mainly focuses on security and enterprise software they still do cell phones but they only account for 0.05 percent of the global market effectively nothing Android and the iPhone undoubtedly killed blackberry but it was black burying themselves who allowed them to do this they were at the top and complacency crept in the models of blackberry didn't really show any great leaps forward or exciting new technology to make you trade in your old one they simply kept producing the same phone model over and over again the cameras did improve a little and they did have new improved features here and there but not the big leaps that was seen with Apple and Android devices at the time blackberry stopped competing stat on its hands and once competitors got ahead they woke up and started playing catch-up to add to this their executives didn't have vision they pushed the company into what they thought consumers wanted instead of actually listening to them jim balsillie former co co blackberry in 2010 was quoted as saying there may be 300,000 apps to the iPhone but the only app you need is your browser this perhaps epitomizes the hard-headed culture and lack of vision in the company which would ultimately lead to us destruction the company leadership failed in several aspects firstly they fail to realize that non-business consumers would eventually drive the market secondly they reacted poorly to the new app economy which meant the iPhone and Android devices so popular and lastly they didn't foresee that mobile devices will evolve from a simple communication service to full mobile entertainment devices the executives persisted with a QWERTY keyboard in the face of touchscreen devices just another example of failing to see where the market was heading this wasn't the easiest thing to see by any means but in the early stages of Android when they saw the iPhone they immediately realized that touch was the future and pivoted their designs to get rid of their keyboards blackberry could have done this what I do give Jim and Mike credit for is the way they ran that company there was enough gas left in the tank if you will to keep the company going and by that I mean Mike Lazaridis still had a library of innovations while Jim Balsillie and his financing the company had over 5 billion dollars of cash when it ran into trouble in 2000 it was had no debt it was conservatively financed it allowed them to buy time to get through their problems the story of blackberry once again highlights the speed at which the technology market can move blackberry got on top by providing a great product but somewhere along the line they stopped innovating when the iPhone came out they were complacent and didn't realize the future until it was too late even as far as 2010 they didn't believe in the concept of apps ultimately blackberry was a company which rose to the top but didn't know how to stay there they weren't hungry to consistently make a better product Apple and Google Android's fierce competition over the years continues to push the boundaries of mobile phone technology blackberry just never felt this pressure until it was too late and in the tech world when you start playing catch-up you've already lost blackberry still makes phones today but they could have been their apple of today if they reacted faster to the iPhone it definitely wouldn't have been easy but it was definitely possible as a result the company couldn't keep a share of the market and in total that is the rise and fall of blackberry so thanks for watching this video it's a doozy ever in a blackberry and if you did would you like to still see blackberry dominate the smartphone market let me know in the comments section below if you want to see more videos on science technology business and history you can subscribe to this channel I'm sure you'll find something interesting here don't forget to check out the podcast versions of these videos as well I'll leave that in link below thanks for watching this has been - go go and you've been watching cold fusion and I'll catch you again soon for the next video cheers guys have a good one cold fusion the clear-thinking [Music]

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 693,389

Rating: 4.9232612 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: iYTos-1FfnM

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/hunkydorey_ca]

While maybe the core concepts of this video may be relevant such as no apps, no users circle, there were lots of details that were not on par.

The devices that were highlighted during keypoints were not accurate. The first touch device was the storm (which was scrubbed from everyones mind as it was so bad, that's why they maybe showed the torch instead). They showed 2 or 3 generational devices after what should have been the correct device.

It wasn't BBM that people started to go nuts about with free 'text messaging' it was PIN messaging, they eventually made a UI called BBM as there was a demand for it.

Some other key failures were blackberry focused too much on corporate, when apple came out with the iphone, rim was like businesses don't want cameras, it's a security issue. etc.

Java had limitations and couldn't expand past 64mb of ram, they decided to purchase QNX which was first implemented on the playbook which was rushed.

There were lots of split decisions between mike and jim which caused lots of tensions.

I'm not even sure what Alicia Keys did when she got paid lots of money to sponsor blackberry.

This video should be called the rise and fall and rise of blackberry as they are coming back. If they didn't buy QNX when they did, they would have nothing right now. QNX is the biggest OS that no one knows about. But they have expanded into lots of automation markets such as cars and such.

[u/BlueberryPiano]

Lol at the "chunky laptop" at 2:58 and woman smoking at it. Ya, that's not at all what laptops looked like in the early 2000s, and smoking in the workplace had already been banned long before then in Canada and probably the US as well.

[u/Gon009]

One thing I don't get: In the video it is said that they jumped into Android and made the phone no different than any other phone on the market. Yeah, the BB Evolve showed as an example makes me agree but only on that model (keyboardless slab).

Later however, the author says that keeping QWERTY was a mistake. It's like two people with different opinions wrote these sentences.

While QWERTY is a niche ans almost dead market, there are still people wanting to have physical QWERTY on their phone. It's a small audience but existing one. If BB went into pure slabs, they would be demolished today by Huawei and Xiaomi. I wonder if BB slabs would even be as popular as Key2. Getting now into Android slab market depends on giving the best hardware possible with the minimum price, that's why Chinese phones get more and more popular. In my country I saw people few years ago for example with LG phones. Now it's Huawei/Xiaomi/sometimes Samsung. The price of Key2 together with that hardware is extremely high in my country.

The problem for me with Keyone/Key2 is the fact that keyboard always takes a space, which for myself one of many reasons to get a physical QWERTY is to get more space by not using virtual keyboard. Other problem is the fact that BB religiously did portrait QWERTY and there are many people wanting landscape keyboards back, it was quite popular one in early Android era and there are people still using phones like Nokia N900. However in times of physical QWERTY touchscreen phones, their hardware was always abysmal. BB never tried to get these people, past ~2010 there was simply a void in the market for landscape keyboards with Sprint exclusive Motorola Photon Q from 2012 being the last typical landscape QWERTY Android phone. Now there is another company with a phone that will finally fill that void.

Anyway, the amount of "written" communication is also lower today and I also experience it because I don't write as much as before, even in times of numeric keyboards I was writing higher amount of text. This and some more are reasons why currently phone with physical QWERTY won't be popular ones, check out the link below:

https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/15/5104704/i-come-not-to-praise-qwerty-but-to-bury-it

So in the end, I don't think that BB would be able to keep having a huge market share without practically redesigning entire company. In my eyes once Samsung started a slab battle with Apple it was already over for any other company to join this to be a "big" phone manufacturer. HTC, Sony, LG, while their phones were fine, Samsung was just more popular, BB could at most become one of them. I have friends who had Sony or LG phones, now everyone have Huawei or Xiaomi phones just because they are cheaper.

In my eyes, being a company making niche phones for a specific audience is not a bad thing. Not everyone want a huge slab.

[u/The_Neato_Mosquito]

Will watch

[u/e_boon]

He barely spent any time on TCL's KEY line

[u/32gbsd]

He seem to forget all the american reviewers screaming "but its not android! why not switch to android? Android is the best!". Reviewers killed bbos10 on their own and now all they talk about is how phones feel in your hand.