Blackberry to stop designing smartphones in-house after 14 years
It’s the end of an era: Canada’s BlackBerry has announced it will stop building hardware altogether, focusing instead on its software and services business. This was the company’s last resort after experiencing high gross loss margins that could not sustain building of more hardware of the Blackberry brand.
“The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners,” Blackberry CEO, John Chen said in the company’s latest financial statement.
However, this doesn’t mean that we will never see a BlackBerry phone again. But if we do, it will be built by another company, mostly likely to be the Indonesia-based BB Merah Putih, currently the company’s only announced hardware partner.
Here are a few reasons why CEO John Chen, planned to stop production of phones;
1. Troubled market share in the smart-phone industry
Blackberry had more than 40 percent of the smart-phone market share just before iPhone and Samsung ventured in. Since then, Blackberry has been experiencing a huge decline in the market and due to losses production cannot be sustained any longer. Signs of reverberation of Blackberry were faced declining growth in the software sector particularly the security of handsets.
2. Inadequate marketing strategies
The last smartphone from Blackberry was in partnership with Alcatel because the software strategies could not match with those of other producers. Blackberry’s competitive ability in the industry could not match those of Apple or Samsung especially in the production of touchscreen phones.
Blackberry’s future plan for the company
After ending the development of more hardware under their brand, the hope of finding the Blackberry brand rests on partner manufacturers’ intentions whether or not to take over their functions. Such partners are the sole hope for the redemption of Blackberry’s lost glory in the industry. This means that there is no hope of ever seeing the Blackberry brand in the market again. The only possibility for revival is the company’s hardware partner, BB Merah Putih in Indonesia.
The end of hardware production for Blackberry brand has long been anticipated after the company lost its glory in the smart-phone industry in the late 20th century. This had been foreshadowed by the decline in profits and slow response to technological changes. Consequently, the Blackberry brand is certainly exiting the market forever.
