Whatever happened to the Blackberry?

Remember when Blackberry ruled the world? I do! In fact I remember the first time that I ever saw a Blackberry. I'd received an email from a colleague and it included a signature which read "Sent from my Blackberry Wireless Handheld".

I asked him what this was all about and he produced from his pocket this little purple device and it turned out to be the Blackberry 7290.

I was instantly blown away by the device and immediately wanted one for myself. I got one shortly thereafter and it just made my life so much easier. I had a phone that I could also read emails on and browse the web. This was amazing, and so followed a period of unquestioned brand loyalty to these devices which were manufactured by the Canadian company known as Research in Motion (RIM).

Apart from one brief flirtation with what turned out to be a truly horrible Windows Mobile device, I spent the next few years using Blackberry smart phones including the Curve 8310 and finally the Bold 9000.

Blackberry was the undisputed champion of the smart phones, and this was specifically true when it came to businesses. Business people loved them, and so did the IT Professionals because they were easy and secure to manage.

So what went wrong? Boom - exactly five years ago today, this happened and everything started to change;

Steve Jobs took to the stage on June 29th 2007 and introduced the first iPhone. Initially it seemed as though iPhone and Blackberry would not be competition. The iPhone really started out as a pure consumer product, some people would even have called it a toy - whereas Blackberry was very specifically aimed towards the business sector.

Those lines started to blur however in the next couple of years, and when Apple introduced the App Store - people realised that there were Apps emerging to make the iPhone do almost anything you needed. iPhone became a device that businesses now wanted to use as well. All the while, RIM were not really evolving, and the emergence of Android hardly helped the situation either.

So what did RIM do to address this? Well, they tried to emulate the competition. They launched Blackberry App World in an attempt to tap into the consumer market. They also tried their hand at a touchscreen device (the Blackberry Storm).

It all felt a little half hearted however, and all it succeeded in achieving was to distance themselves from their core business customers - the true Blackberry devotees who love their physical keyboards, and firmly believe that Blackberry is the only device for business. RIM really need to hang on to these people!

They did enjoy a mini resurgence when teenagers started snapping up Blackberry devices to take advantage of the free to use Blackberry Instant Messenger service. However, a disastrous service interruption last year left users around the world without Email or Messaging functionality for several days, and this lead more and more loyal Blackberry users away and into the arms of Apple or Android.

Changes at the top level of RIMs management structure seem to have had little impact so far, and if they are ever to recapture their former glory, they are going to have to emerge from this identity crisis that they seem to be suffering. In recent days however, further setbacks at RIM have been highlighted. The new Blackberry 10 phone and OS have been delayed until 2013 - a delay that RIM really can't afford. In addition to this, 3000 RIM employees are to find themselves out of a job.

Sad to see, and it's amazing how things change so quickly isn't it. Apple and Android are King right now without question, but if Microsoft get themselves organized and make Windows Phone 8 a huge hit - then the landscape could all change yet again.

Who knows, and only time will tell!

Peter