In 1984, two engineering students Mike Lazaridis, and Douglas Fregin, founded an electronics and computer science consulting company called Research In Motion. The company grew into one of the world's most valuable tech companies after focusing on a breakthrough product called the BlackBerry, an easy, secure and effective device that allowed workers to send and receive e-mails while away from the office. The company was eventually renamed to be BlackBerry Limited
The BlackBerry at its peak was an indispensable accessory of business executives, heads of state, and celebrities, dominating the smartphone market of business and government usage with 50% US market share in 2009. In the recent years, intense competition from Apple's iPhone
When Apple's iPhone was first introduced in 2007, numerous media outlets called it a "BlackBerry killer", noting the slowing growth rate of BlackBerry sales and the fast-paced growth of the iPhone. The 87 percent drop in BlackBerry's stock price between 2010 and 2013 is primarily attributed to the performance of the iPhone handset, which took three years since its market debut to finally surpass the BlackBerry in sales. Apple's iPhone 4, introduced in 2010, was the first model that caused Apple to start consistently surpassing BlackBerry in quarterly smartphone sales. Apple's installed base in the United States finally passed BlackBerry in April 2011. Sales of the iPhone continued to accelerate with the boom in the smartphone market, and by February 2016, only 0.8% of smartphone users in the United States had a BlackBerry compared to the 43.9% on an iPhone.
The introduction of Google's Android mobile operating system, running on hardware by a range of smartphone manufacturers was unfortunately even more bad news. Android's initial release was on September 23, 2008, and quickly surpassed the installed base of the BlackBerry. Compared to BlackBerry's current 0.8%, almost 53% of smartphone users in the United States are running Android.
Critics attribute the decline of the BlackBerry to a number of issues, but it is somewhat established that the BlackBerry's lack of appeal to consumers compared to the iPhone and Android smartphones is the primary cause of its decline. The BlackBerry was comparatively outdated in terms of its hardware and operating system, and unappealing to the competition which offered a variety of third-party consumer applications, as well as much better web browsing capabilities.
Currently, BlackBerry offers four main smartphone products called Priv, BlackBerry Passport, BlackBerry Classic, and BlackBerry Leap. It also provides the mobile operating system BlackBerry 10, as well as BlackBerry Enterprise Software, which the company claims to be the world's most trusted enterprise solution. Despite RIM's efforts to catch up to the competition by releasing models without the BlackBerry trademark keyboard, and adopting the Android OS on newer smartphones, BlackBerry is unlikely to regain its throne as king of the smartphone market.
However, the company is still the leader is enterprise mobility and security, making it the trusted device at the White House and government-related organizations around the world. John Chen, the current CEO who has been with BlackBerry since 2013, commented in an interview last year that the consumer business is no longer a priority, and the focus is on developing software to innovate ways to keep data secure and information private. With the company focused on what it still does best, there is still opportunity for at least a small comeback, as there is still a demand for devices and software that offers the best enterprise-grade solutions to concerns like security and privacy.
