Last week BlackBerry (BB) tweeted that they were letting their agreement with the Chinese electronics group TCL Communication lapse at the end of August 2020. This most likely is the end of the BlackBerry smartphone. TCL had been manufacturing BlackBerry smartphones since the Canadian company stopped making its name-sake phones in 2016 amid an attempt to re-shape itself into a cyber-security company.
BlackBerry’s preceded the iPhone and Android in important ways. How did the Blackberry phone go from world domination to last week’s announcement?
Blackberry history
March 1984: Research in Motion (RIM) was founded in Canada.
October 1997: RIM went public with an IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange which raised $115 million.
July 1998: The RIM 850 the initial BlackBerry device offered something all its competitors couldn’t touch at the time – access to emails on the go (no voice).
1999: RIM joined NASDAQ as RIMM.
November 2001: Patent holding company NTP sued RIM for patent infringement RIM lost and was forced to settle for $612.5M in 2006.
March 2002: BlackBerry 5810 released, with both voice and data support. It ran on a 2G network and came with a color screen. It became the device of choice in corporate America due to its enterprise-level security.
2005: RIM launched a proprietary mobile instant-messaging application BlackBerry Messenger. BBM came at a time when other mobile messaging options — like SMS messages — were subpar.
March 2007: The company “restated” $250M earnings relating to a “backdating” stock options scandal. RIM executives changed the date of stock sales to a low share price date to make money on their stock options. The scandal cost RIM’s co-CEOs Balsillie and Lazaridis and others their jobs at RIM and a total of C$77M in fines.
January 2007: Apple launched its first iPhone, opening the market to full touch screen phones.
June 2007: BlackBerry had some 8 million customers.
October 2008: First Android-powered smartphone is released.
November 2008: BlackBerry launched the ill-fated Storm, its first full touch phone in reaction to iPhone.
September 2009: BlackBerry hits 20.7% worldwide smartphone market share in Q3. iPhone is at 17.1% and Android at 3.5%.
April 2010: Apple released the original iPad.
April 2011: RIM released the PlayBook tablet as a knee-jerk reaction to the success of the Apple iPad. Contributing to the PlayBook’s poor sales was the dumb decision to not offer email services without a BlackBerry smartphone.
July 2011: 10% of RIM workforce (2,000 workers) laid off.
October 2011: RIM had a global failure of its infrastructure – users are left without service for four days (Oct 10-13).
June 2012: RIM announced 5,000 layoffs.
January 2013: The company changed its name from Research in Motion to Blackberry and goes from RIMM to BBRY on the NASDAQ.
September 2013: BlackBerry peaked with 79 million global users and 4,500 employees are laid-off (40% of staff).
November 2013: John Chen becomes CEO and starts to pivot BBRY from a phone maker to a security firm.
September 2015: BlackBerry launched the Priv, the first Android-powered BlackBerry smartphone. BlackBerry acquired mobile security provider Good Technology for $425M and integrated it into the BlackBerry Enterprise Mobility Suite, for its enterprise customers.
September 2016: Blackberry becomes Blackberry Limited and stops making smartphones and outsource all hardware development and manufacturing.
May 2017: The number of BlackBerry users plummets from 80 million to 11 million.
October 2017: BlackBerry Ltd moved from NASDAQ as BBRY to BB on the NYSE.
November 2018: BlackBerry Limited purchased security firm Cylance for $1.4B.
May 2019: BBM for consumers is shut down.
The Blackberry Limited tweet marks the end of a line of devices that revolutionized mobile productivity for the enterprise. For the uninitiated (those under 30) in its heyday, Blackberry set the bar for mobile innovation. BlackBerry smartphones or “crackberries” as many referred to them helped set the stage for many of the mobile features we rely on today.
The company made its own hardware which included a QWERTY keyboard. Qwerty keyboards that made it easier to fire off emails and instant messages. BlackBerry smartphones were the best way to stay connected without a laptop.
BlackBerry Mobile Services provided business users with quick encrypted end-to-end email over a low bandwidth connection. BMS also provided users access to not only their contacts, calendar, and email, but connected enterprise apps and data.
Back in the day when I was sharing technical services we even stood up a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) for our customers to link their BBeries to Exchange. BES was sold as a highly secure BES platform that ensured the content was always encrypted and uncrackable.
Holger Mueller, the principal analyst at Constellation Research, pointed out to TargetTech the irony of BlackBerry’s fall.
That’s the irony — users and CIOs got rid of [their] BlackBerrys despite email volume being up … Business users went from being productive on the go to [becoming] lurkers and [doing] email at night.
Tuong Nguyen, a senior principal analyst at Gartner, told TargetTech the BlackBerry smartphone relevance disappeared well before this week’s announcement.
By the time the company stopped making its own phones, its global smartphone market share was well under 1% .. In fact, they had started dipping under the 1% threshold [around] 2013-2014.
rb-
I think the market has space for a productivity-oriented company that respects its users. But to unseat Apple, that firm would have to excel at something else, like folding screens, projection, AR/VR.
The original BlackBerry company — BlackBerry Limited — now focuses on security software. This is ironic since the Snowden papers revealed that the NSA has access to user data on BlackBerry devices.
In the end BlackBerry, just like Nokia, Palm and Microsoft underestimated the challenge from Apple Perhaps BlackBerry needs to be done with phones.
Related article
- BlackBerry’s transition to a cyber security company, its 2020 goals and the importance of trust (Information Age)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
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