Is Blackberry going the way of Nokia, another “has been” company in the world of mobile handsets?

The smart phone game has changed dramatically since Blackberry began its ascent a decade ago by redefining the category. Blackberry with its hardware and software had become an essential tool of the corporate world.

By established strong relationships with the IT departments, they delivered reliable email connectivity to the manager on the go.  This made even its weaknesses, like the qwerty keyboard, a much loved quirkiness that users swear by.  But, since the introduction of iPhone and its touch screen in 2007, it is Apple that has been leading the hardware and software development (through its application network) in this category. Meanwhile, the ubiquity of the mobile telephones means that today more consumers access internet via their handsets rather than PCs forcing Google to develop the Android platform for smartphones.

Apple now owns “fun”, Google “open, free, ubiquity” leaving Blackberry with “reliability” as its core proposition. This is what makes the recent outage such a problem for Blackberry because it strikes at the heart of its raison d’être. Brands like Blackberry develop a cult following and need to push their loyal consumers to consider alternatives, even if they are superior. Blackberry may have finally achieved that!