BlackBerry, a Canadian company was one of the pioneers of the idea of making phones do more than just phone calls and text messaging. BlackBerry heavily dominated the smartphone market, then they watched as the iPhone and Android mobile ecosystem stole their territory.
The problem BlackBerry had was that they lost their soul. By soul, I am referring to the very essence of the company, the real mission that birthed the company in the first place. Because even though BlackBerry, iPhone and Android phones were all called smartphones, the difference seemed clear to some of us.
BlackBerry was for communication, they had the best device for communication. The best feature of a BlackBerry was its LED light that indicated when you had new messages. No app in the iOS or Android stores can do that! While iOS and Android were building entertainment devices, devices for you to play games, watch movies, take (and share) pictures (and selfies) and surf the internet, BlackBerry had a solid communication device and their mission then was to simply keep building better devices while retaining the soul of their company: secured effective communication. They goofed.
BlackBerry failed to realise that some people still needed smartphones built for work, not games! I do a lot of work on the go, my primary device for communication is not the 10 inch tab I hug around all day, it is the BlackBerry Curve 4 my elder sister gifted me a while back. When I was on the go and couldnt access my PC, it was my (outdated) BlackBerry device that kept #TMP going! I never look forward to the day I would be forced to type out really long articles on my touchscreen devices.
BlackBerry started making touchscreen phones too, they started making their devices look and work like iOS and Android devices, they where so obsessed with competition that they lost every regard for their own identity. Over time, they lost more ground.
Things became to turn around when they hired a new CEO who has decided to revisit the company’s past and retrace their steps. By doing so, They unveiled the BlackBerry Passport, a phone so weird looking that only BlackBerry could have built it, yet looking at the phone and the thinking behind it, you can feel it will be tremendously useful to guys like me, people who work on the move! Yesterday, BlackBerry announced the BlackBerry Classic, which keeps the advancements of the company’s BlackBerry 10 phones, but brings back some aspects of the older models. They include the row of hardware navigation buttons above the trademark physical keyboard.
In our businesses, we must never become so obsessed with competition that we then lose respect for what makes us unique in the first place, we should avoid the temptation to disregard our mission and muddle it up with what the others are doing.
I have used BlackBerry as a case study, but this challenge is something we face everyday in every sphere of life. When that happens, just like BlackBerry, the best way to move forward is to take a step back. What was the last successful original idea we executed? Where did we get it wrong?
It is much too early to determine whether BlackBerry’s new approach is working. But for once, it feels good to many people to know that their is a real alternative to the market leaders, an alternative that is not just about the price and hardware quality. In all honesty, This BlackBerry Classic looks like the smartest move Blackberry has made in years.
