Blackberry case Business & Marketing Case Study Paper

Blackberry: Case Study
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Blackberry Case
Summary
BlackBerry is a popular product albeit that currently, it is on the ‘wrong’ side of history. Himsel and Inkpen (2020) narrates the growth and supposedly fall from the perch for the technological firm, Blackberry. Michael Lazaridis founded Research in Motion (RIM) in 1984 and the company launched its Blackberry in 1999. Lazaridis was proficient in engineering has been an exceptional student at the University of Waterloo. His ability even earned him an Emmy and an Oscar for technical innovation. His innovative mind led him to launch BlackBerry, which “was the first always-on mobile email product with a keyboard” (Himsel & Inkpen, 2020). This feature made the product a popular piece in corporate America. In essence, the company’s share price rose from $10 to $260 between March 199 and March 2000 elevating the company’s market capitalization to $18.6 billion.
However, in the early 2000s, the tech landscape began changing with the emergence of various products including laptops, digital cameras, MP3 music players, mobile phones, pagers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs). The number of products was a source of confusion for some firms as they failed to articulate the most probable direction of the market. Between 2005 and 2007, RIM was fortunate to have many wireless carriers selling their products. In 2005, the company was racking revenues to the tune of $1.35 billion with a net income of $213 million. By 2007 when Apple was launching its iPhone, BlackBerry was in 110 countries.
iPhone launch in 2007 led to a 10% drop in RIM shares with Apple’s primary selling point being the touchpad. In six months since the launch, the company had already done about four million units in sales. The only shortcoming noted was its “compatibility issues with corporate email systems” making it less attractive to the corporate world (Himsel & Inkpen, 2020). Worse is that Lazaridis disregarded the competition that Apple brought to the table. Besides, RIM’s continued monthly service fee was a significant problem for the carriers.
RIM’s pressure to compete with the iPhone led to the launch of the touchscreen phone, Storm. However, it was hurried through and when it was launched it had significant problems to the extent that Verizon incurred about $500 million in replacing a million units. The launch of the Blackberry App World had minimal impact as Apple had taken a significant share of this market. Leadership struggles begun to emerge with Lazaridis and Balsillie unable to agree on the way forward concerning product development. Eventually, employees began losing confidence in the company and most of them resigned. There were frequent downsizing and from 2011 onwards...