BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) U.S. smartphone subscriber share dropped only 0.8 percent in one quarter. Z10 manufacturer share dropped from 5.2 percent ending in March to 4.4 percent in three months ending in June, says a report from comScore.
Usually, people expect BlackBerry market shares to drop in big numbers, but this quarter was not a usual one as in the April-June period the Canadian company launched Z10 and Q10 models in North America.
More competition ahead
The smartphone market in the United States will get new phones like LG G2 and Moto X along with new Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94) (KRX:005930) Galaxy Note models. However, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) is going to face more challenges ahead in winter. The company could not stand up to the competition in spring when there were few major releases.
BlackBerry should focus on other markets
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) can only expect a breather from South Africa, Nigeria, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and a handful of Middle Eastern markets. In the United States, shares are dwindling, says a report from Forbes. BlackBerry now holds a chance to rebound from its current decline by positioning its low priced models well in the market. Q5, which is the ‘valued’ version of BlackBerry, is too expensive to compete with cheap Androids in Africa and Asia.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has come up with a decent priced phone armada that has new generation apps like WeChat, Kik, Whatsapp, Kakao Talk and Line. Millions of users download these apps daily thus giving it an edge over BBM, the key messaging app of BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB). BBM should be successful on Android and iOS if BlackBerry wants to gain market share. The Canadian firm has added Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) apps in BlackBerry 10 smartphones along with features like Facebook chat.
Turnaround strategy not effective enough
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) has also confirmed that three executives left the company: Doug Kozak, vice president of corporate information technology operations; Carmine Arabia, senior vice president of global manufacturing and supply chain; and Graeme Whittington, vice president of service operations. It seems like the turnaround strategy of BlackBerry is not as successful as planned by CEO Thorsten Heins.
The turnaround strategy was also criticized in a report from IDC—the phone maker has slipped to fourth place behind Windows phone in the worldwide smartphone market share. BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB), according to data collected by IDC, sold 6.8 million handsets in the second quarter of 2013, which is 2.9 per cent of the market. The number is a decline of 11.7 percent from the corresponding quarter of 2012 where it sold 7.7 million handsets and held 4.9 percent of market share.
