Challenges and Opportunities of Blackberry - Coursework Example

Brand Reinvention It has taken several years for blackberry to identify and acknowledge its folly in the business market. Even after seeing the light, the company still went on to produce more and more devices that were neither satisfactory to the business people nor the consumers. Another disaster struck the company as though the first was not enough, it happened when there was a breach on the company’s fame security. This led to the removal of the last reason that was compelling that most were to purchase blackberry smartphone devices (Miller, 2011). In addition, the company also changed its mission to show a new commitment to devices and smartphone software. The company started by identifying its sole consumer base and this led to the change of its mission. Today, the company is not only focused on the hyper-connected type of people in the market but also tries to capture the attention of every single consumer who is interested in getting their things done in a secure and quicker way. These are not only business users but also people in the society who do rely on social media for communication purposes and several other people who solely rely on mobile devices for survival. Background About a decade ago, blackberry was not only the leading company that was offering technology of smartphones but also the only company during that time to offer what was referred to as smartphone. With time, blackberry found itself in bad situations when it started losing ground to smartphone technology. The company that once appeared to so many as a prominent company, the role of blackberry in the mobile market has since been reduced to that of a bystander in the market. Back during its inception, blackberry started as a subsidiary of an information management company referred as research in motion. The company used to specialize in the security of data and the fast transfer of information that is time sensitive. Given the central focus of the company, it was natural that research in motion developed devices to try to speed up the transfer of information and improve the security of communication for mobile professionals. A two-way pager that was introduced in the late nineties was the first blackberry device to be introduced in the market. Years later, the company introduced the first smartphone in the market. The phone was named 850. 850 smartphone was the first mobile phone to can support telephony, Text messaging and email support. The phone was one of its kinds; it was able to offer its users a real QWERTY keyboard and a navigational mouse that was functional. Being the first mobile company to launch a smartphone in the market gave blackberry added advantages. This helped the company churn several of its successors to the 850. Despite the brand and the new utility it provided in the market, the devices never caught the attention of the mainstream market. Despite being the first to that manufactures mobile devices to market a smartphone mobile device, blackberry failed to recognize the value that its product had in addition to the threats that were posed by all its competitors. Other consumer products took advantage of blackberry’s short sight and immediately threatened the core business of blackberry so the research in motion did not pay much attention to the trend. As more people and business purchased other products in the competitive market with blackberry such as the iPhone and other types of smartphones, they soon realized that there was no point of owning two smartphone devices. The smartphones that were non-blackberry were fully able to function and do everything that a blackberry smartphone was capable of doing and even more. In the need, it resulted to the collapse of the market shares of blackberry. Challenges and opportunities The challenges and opportunities facing blackberry industry can only be identified through SWOT analysis. Plans Despite the fact blackberry has been categorized as a respectable brand that is well known globally, the fact remains that the future remains the critical part of the company’s resurgence from collapse. The company is still far from reaching its full market share potential and profitability. The company still needs to solve several problems of brand categories that they should enter and how they can stay away from the consumers who are non-targeted including rappers. They might play a role in damaging the image of the brand that the company is fighting hard to bring it back to limelight (Ross, 2011). The company must come up with feasible solutions. It has to recognize the criteria in decisions to take into consideration when putting alternatives into analysis. The company must take its brand image so seriously. When analyzing the alternatives, the company has to consider how each alternative is going to affect the image of the brand. Secondly, the company has to look into ways through which it can increase its shares in the market. In the plan, the company has to look into solutions of coming up with a brand extension of the current BB10 model that is in the market. The product should of high quality. It should be able to give its potential consumers the idea that the BB10 is fun to have and use. Secondly, the company should also seek ways through which it can expand the current make-up of the Blackberry 10 (BB10) model. Its operating system should be extended in such a way that it can accept multitasking (Portfolio Models 2008). Phases The phases of the product introduction should be done in the right time. The reason as to why blackberry had experience turmoil in its product sales was early introduction of its products in the market. This time, the product will be introduced in phases to avoid the company going through loss. The first phase will be the pretesting phase. This phase will be critical to the production and sale of any product. It will also act as a checker stage where consumer taste will be first tested before any product is produced (Simmons, 2009). "ROI testing" and "Gant chart" Return on Investment Blackberry’s returns on investment tend to vary depending on the role played by employees in the organization and the impact their daily activities do have on the profitability of the firm. The return on investment of blackberry continues to strengthen because of significant increases in the efficiency of workflow and personal productivity. The productivity of blackberry’s return on investment will continue to rely on the personal productivity given that the core objective of blackberry’s solution relies on the effectiveness of the mobile device. Another factor that will remain strong in contributing to the return on investment of blackberry is the immediacy. It has been noted that several people do credit blackberry with reaping huge gains in finance and winning, these helps in holding the clients. Therefore, it helps in significantly providing the intended value for the users of blackberry. Example • Salary of $100,000 • One-to-two ratio of mobile employee to other employees • Value of time sensitive email or voice call is $5 each Source of Value Dollar Amount Cumulative Returns BlackBerry TCO BlackBerry ROI Payback Period Productivity $6,250 $6,250 $1,315 475% 77 days Workflow $33,630 $39,880 $1,315 3033% 12 days Immediacy $18,500 $58,380 $1,315 4440% 8 days Gant chart This horizontal bar will help blackberry use as a tool of production. The chart is also a tool that will be used in planning, coordinating and tracking some projects in the company. The horizontal lines represent the time taken of the project whereas the vertical axis represents the task making up the project. The bars that are horizontal represent the sequences, timing and time taken for every task. The bars do overlap sometimes. As the project continues to progresses, other bars may be added. In addition to this, bars that are dark as well as arrowheads may be added to represent the tsk completed or the part of the task that have been done. This chart will help black berry track its progress in the market and in launching its brands. Agencies Blackberry will maintain it profile in the market through having contracts with three important agencies. They include corporates, companies and governments. The three agencies will provide a good market for blackberry products since the company offer highly secured products. Budget The total cost of the blackberry reinvention will be costly. The total cost to be used in the branding will incorporate the cost for new market findings, the cost to be used in developing new and current operating system to be used in the new brand. This will cost the company a huge amount of money to see it come back to its glory days where blackberry dominated the smartphone sells. Dollar value of Immediacy Annual BlackBerry Return (dollar value x 2,500 time sensitive emails per year) Annual BlackBerry Return (dollar value x 1,200 voice calls per year) Total Annual BlackBerry Return (email and voice) $1 $2,500 $1,200 $3,700 $2 $5,000 $2,400 $7,400 $5 $12,500 $6,000 $18,500 $10 $25,000 $12,000 $37,000 $15 $37,500 $18,000 $55,500 $20 $50,000 $24,000 $74,000 Conclusion After several attempts of trying to bring the company back to its feet had failed through re-launching of the same brand, RIM reached a conclusion of focusing its all attention and resources. It started making smartphone devices and software that can be accommodated by smartphones. The company started rebranding itself by first changing its name from research in motion to maintain a single name of blackberry. Appendix SWOT Strengths Highly secured phones- the primary advantage in the competitive market that blackberry has- is production of mobile phones that are secure. The company produced smartphones that are very secure with encrypted network and can allow an individual to send emails to several other phones without having chances of someone stealing the sent information. This idea became a new selling proportion of blackberry that was unique. This feature was only in blackberry smartphone and not in other smartphones resulted in attracting several corporates and governments. The company total sells is starting to increase. Strong focus on the narrow consumer segment- unlike before where the marketing strategy of the company was poor, blackberry is now trying to appeal to a small segment of consumers via the market including the corporates and the government. With this narrow segment, the company can now have a focused approach in trying to satisfy all the needs of its consumer-based customers in the market. It is rarely done by other smartphone companies in the market hence gives the new blackberry a competitive edge. Weaknesses Inability to market the brand- long before the iPhone was launched or the success of Samsung galaxy, the brand of blackberry was already known in the market. At the time when iPhone was being launched in the market, research in motion had a blackberry phone with better quality compared to the iPhone in the market. In addition, it also enjoyed huge sales and greater reputation in its brand but the company was unable to take the opportunity and build on it because of poor efforts in marketing. Research in motion was spending less amount to market the product compared to the other smartphone producing companies in the market. Even with the good qualities of products in the market, it became hard for the company to offer its products to the consumers to buy. Because of this, the company the overshadowed by other companies whose products were no match for blackberry devices at the time. Therefore, poor marketing strategy was a major contributing factor to the collapse of the market share of blackberry and the ultimate collapse of the company. The company’s inability to market its brand had some impacts on the decline in the reputation of blackberry brand. It also led to the decline of customer’s loyalty on the brand. In the year 2012, blackberry’s brand was among the list of the smartphone producing companies whose brands were declining. The decline in the company brand simply indicates that the value of the product must decrease as a result of the low sales originating from decrease brand appeal to the consumers. Blackberry operating system- all phones being produced by Blackberry Company are powered by the same operating system being produced by the company. This acted as a boosting part in other companies such as apple since blackberry phones were experiencing different effects. To start with, the base of the blackberry is small to be profitable for major developers of applications. With few applications in store in the case of blackberry devices deters many customers from buying such products. In addition to this, the company had no sufficient funds and coordination that could be helpful in the development of its operating system property. The company has suffered much from using the old and outdated fashion of operating system in its mobile devices as well as the delay in introducing the new operating system in its smartphones. Highly dependent on corporate contracts as well as contracts from the government- the product is highly dependent on government and corporates contracts as the main tool of selling their products. Even though the company gets contract from corporate and government because of the unique features it has in its products, it is not guaranteed that these contracts will run for long and a loss of a single contracts translate to a huge loss of sales (Sehlhorst, 2007). Poor presence in the tablet market- the playbook ta let that was manufactured by blackberry’s research in motion was one of the most unsuccessful efforts by the company to try to enter the market. Through the wrong use of strategy, the product only captured a small fraction of the market share ad this resulted in great loss for the company. Poor presences of blackberry’s tablet led to a decrease in the chances of the company to complete successfully with the likes of Samsung and apple companies who were enjoying significant income and growth of profits that were emanating from the sales of their tablets and other devices. Opportunities Growth of tablets and smartphone markets- from the current trends in the market, it is expected that the growth in the sales of tablets will be growing by approximately fifty percent annually to some years coming. From these estimates, the sales of these products will be worth a hundred billion dollars. This is a great opportunity for Blackberry Company to take advantage and strengthen its position in the fast growing market, and be able to capture its market share. The company can do this through development of new products that are attractive and capture wide range of people’s attention. Strong markets of mobile advertising market- Any company regard the growth of mobile advertising in the market as the greatest opportunity to enhance its product development and establish its consumer loyalty by drawing more customers. As a result, blackberry cannot be left behind and it should exploit this advantage by investing more in the production of its tablets and smartphones. Obtaining patents through acquisitions- for several years to come it is expected that he cloud-based market services will be growing significantly and reach a worth of approximately two hundred and forty billion dollars. This is a great opportunity for Blackberry Company to try to expand its cloud-based services. The company will benefit from the demand that is constantly growing. In the competitive sector of technology, the key advantage has a strong portfolio in patent. Patents can be discovered through several means including acquisitions from other firms and this remains the only option that will work best for blackberry at the moment (Caitlin, 2012). Threats Rapid technological changes- changes in technology are taking place at a rapid pace and this makes it hard for many companies to catch up. This is one of the most severe threat for Blackberry Company. Today’s companies are experiencing great pressures in trying to release new products at the same pace with the technological changes. The company that fails to keep pace experiences difficulties in keeping pace with the competition soon fails. This becomes even tenfold difficult when a company introduces a new product. Blackberry’s Research in motion has for long been the subject of this type of threat several times when it failed to release its new operating system for its blackberry’s phones in the right time and when it rushed to introduced its playbook tablet in the market. All these technological advancements had a great impact on the loss of sales and the ultimate downfall of research in motion. Saturated smartphones markets in the developed countries- there is slow growth of smartphones in the developed countries and the sales in these countries is experiencing slow rate of growth as a result of saturated economies. This critically affected the ability of Blackberry Company to expand its market share in both Canada and the United States. Increased competition for government contracts- normally many governments renew its contracts with several of its suppliers after few years and this makes blackberry have the ability to compete with other formidable companies like Samsung and apple so that they can renew their contracts. Despite the fact that blackberry has an added advantage over the rest of the companies since it produces high secure devices, it has to compete with other companies on other features of the phones base well. In some United States contracts, blackberry has been outcompeted by Samsung Company to supply their devices. Return on Investment (ROI) BlackBerry ROI = Cumulative Returns / BlackBerry TCO Payback Period = BlackBerry TCO / (Cumulative Returns / 365 days) BlackBerry ROI = Cumulative Returns / BlackBerry Net TCO Payback Period = BlackBerry Net TCO / (Cumulative Returns / 365 days References Caitlin M, RIM Reinvents Itself With New Name, New Blackberry 10 OS, New Smartphones, Retrieved From Http://Www.Techhive.Com/Article/2026691/Rim-Reinvents-Itself-With- New-Name-New-Blackberry-10-Os-New-Smartphones.Html Miller, M. (2011). Blackberry Playbook companion. Indianapolis, Ind, John Wiley & Sons. http://www.123library.org/book_details/?id=30307.\ Portfolio Models (2008). Accessed 7th December, 2011. Ross, H. J. (2011). Reinventing diversity: transforming organizational community to strengthen people, purpose, and performance. Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Retrieved from http:// books?id=q1RJ unSTDAC&pg=PA17&dq=Reinventing+Blackberry&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fY6BVO7TEMf jywP5uoDIDQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Reinventing Blackberry&f=false Sehlhorst, S. (2007). Product life cycle and the ROI of Agile development. Accessed 7th December, 2011. Simmons, J. (2009). Twenty-six ways of looking at a blackberry: how to release the creativity of your brand. London, A. & C. Black. Retrieved from books?id=WRhlhlGG5_wC&pg=PA102&dq=Reinventing+Blackberry+through+brandin g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rY- BVPPTIsn_ywONu4KYBw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Reinventing Blackberry through branding&f=false Portfolio Models (2008). Accessed 7th December, 2011. http://www.soopertutorials.com/business/marketing/1393-product-portfolio-models.html http:// www.ca.blackberry.com/company/about-us/corporate-responsibility.html https://contentequalsmoney.com/back-from-the-dead-what-companies-can-learn-from-the- reinvention-of-blackberry/ https://contentequalsmoney.com/back-from-the-dead-what-companies-can-learn-from-the- reinvention-of-blackberry/ http://www.itworldcanada.com/blackberry-reinvented Read More