BlackBerry Ltd (BBRY) Has No One To Blame But Itself

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BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) is going through a tough time with low stock prices, losses and a declining market share. Recently, CEO John Chen said that the company has equal chances of being successful or the other way around. However, the company has itself to blame for the lost crown. A report by The Globe and Mail has listed down few of the factors responsible for the unprecedented fall of the Canadian firm.

BlackBerry missed many trends

The Waterloo Ontario based company missed the growing trend of tablets, which gained popularity after the PC shipments started to decline. The playbook offered by the company did not become popular among the masses and failed to gain market share.

According to Globe and Mail, the tablet from BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) was set to be launched in the fall of 2010, but was late and didn’t appear until April 2011. It was an unusual accessory to RIM’s smartphones and lacked e-mails, contacts and apps.

“Once again, RIM had missed the mark: Tablets that sold well worked as standalone devices, which the PlayBook wasn’t,” says the report.

BlackBerry failed to capitalize on the corporate shift towards the, bring your own device model. The company was in the middle of the world thriving with opportunities in apps, smartphone and consumerization of IT, but again failed to understand the trend and reap the benefits of it.

Rivals were quick to adapt

BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB), which is very dependant on software, ignored its developer community at a time when major changes to infrastructure were being implemented. Software developers were left with little options after they were told that the apps needed to be rewritten for the new system if they wanted to be a part of BlackBerry. Some of the developers, according to the report, ignored the order, and quit the ecosystem.

BlackBerry underestimated the app ecosystem, which would have helped the users to enjoy the technology much more.

Apple iOS and Google’s Android were the early movers, and thus gained enough traction in the market. Competitors like Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) followed a different strategy, and focused on the external market needs by designing widely applicable web solutions contrary to BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB). The Canadian company learned the bitter truth that in the technology space, competitors can come up from anywhere; it can be a tech company like Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), an automobile giant like Ford or a retailer behemoth like Wal-Mart.

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