The idea of BlackBerry going under doesn’t seem far-fetched anymore. The company has plummeted down from the tag of being the only ‘serious’ smart phone manufacturer to a struggling franchise that is barely able to survive. The Canadian government recently had to ask Telefonica to buy $260 million worth of the company’s stock just to keep it above water. As sudden as its downfall has been, there are some glaring missteps in its ways that have brought it where it is.
At the most basic level, BlackBerry created a number of issues with its BlackBerry 10 OS which were unique to the platform; it was especially bad for the company as these issues damaged many of the features which had made BlackBerry so popular in the first place. Many of the functionalities that are now standard in smart phones were native to BlackBerry long before anyone else even approached them; however, the company has let its rivals catch up to it through the last couple of years, with some having already overtaken it in terms of functionality.
One of the pivotal features unique to BlackBerry was its highly customizable notifications, with its lightning sound of received email being recognizable even to non-users. However, these familiar sounds were gradually done away with, cutting off many of the old users’ associations with the devices. Other useful features such as the bedside mode and also to some extent the accessories and charging docks for the older devices made up the BlackBerry experience that users coveted; however most of these have been done away with in BlackBerry 10.
Then there was the definitive feature of the BlackBerry platform, its BlackBerry Internet service and the BlackBerry Enterprise Service. These were the legendary secure instant push email services which made BlackBerry phones the hallmark of internet communication devices back in its day. The new platform has done away with these and in a way the unique identity of BlackBerry as well. The new phones provide the standard IMAP access to emails, same as the other mobile platforms.
Lastly, the decision to postpone the release of the BlackBerry 10 devices to January this year proved to be greatly damaging to the company’s prospects. The Z10 could have turned out to be a genuine rival to the likes of iPhone 5, Galaxy SIII and the new range of Nokia’s Lumia phones; however the delayed launch allowed others to gather momentum in its absence and there just wasn’t room for a fourth player when it hit the market.
