The Rise And Fall Of BlackBerry Der Aufstieg und Fall von BlackBerry Auge y declive de BlackBerry L'ascension et la chute de BlackBerry ブラックベリーの興亡 블랙베리의 흥망성쇠 A ascensão e queda do BlackBerry Взлет и падение BlackBerry Зліт і падіння BlackBerry 黑莓的兴衰

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 diese Geschäfte wiederum belasten waren

consumer adoption so at that point Verbraucherakzeptanz, so dass zu diesem Zeitpunkt

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 Richtig, das Problem mit ihnen ist wirklich

sort of in the bottom 40 they're it's Sie sind sozusagen in den unteren 40

it's this stuff right here they all have es ist dieses Zeug hier, das sie alle haben

these keyboards that are there whether diese Tastaturen, die es gibt, ob

you need them or not to be there what man sie braucht oder nicht, um da zu sein, was

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