Black Berry - Strategic Marketing Plan - Case Study Example

The paper "BlackBerry - Strategic Marketing Plan" is a good example of a marketing case study. Research in Motion (RIM) ventured into the communication industry in 1984. The company was founded by Mike Laziridis and its entry into the market was marked by the two-way paging technology. The company started the two-way paging devices to act as a substitute to Motorola’s Sky Tel. The first BlackBerry mobile phone was launched into the market in 1999 followed by the release of the first Smartphone known as BlackBerry Bold in 2000. This was the beginning of the company to venture into the high technology industry. The device was a major success due to its unparalleled encryption technology, which made the device to be preferred in the corporations and government agencies. Blackberry was soon highly adopted into the consumer market. The device started facing stiff competition through intense technology by Apple and Samsung in 2007. This led to the company market share being eroded and in 2011; the company lost 80% of their wealth. The company faced further challenges when their encryption technology network was faced with power outages in 2011. This led to the shareholders as well as the rest of stakeholders to demand changes in the firm. The company CEO stepped down and a new CEO was elected. The company struggled to build its client base despite the challenges and had almost over 80 million subscribers by 2014. The release of new smartphones has been well received in the market. There has been an appreciation of the company market share in the mobile communication market due to its products. At the moment, RIM is one of the successful designers, manufacturers and marketers in the mobile communication market. The company line of products includes the BlackBerry wireless platforms, BlackBerry wireless handheld, radio modems, software, and hardware licensing and software development tools. The current family of smartphones by the company are; BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve among others (Blackberry, 2013).

• • 3.2 SBU – Blackberry – Smartphone

BlackBerry strategic business unit being analysed is their Smartphone. The company recent Smartphone which has gained popularity are BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve. The predecessors of the current smartphones are handheld PDAs and mobile phones. The first Smartphone was developed by IBM in 1992. The phone had a calendar, notebook, email, fax and games. This was followed by Nokia Smartphone in 1996 known as Nokia 9000. In 1997, Ericsson released its Smartphone. The Smartphone market became crowded in the 2000s with other companies coming into the market with new models. The company first Smartphone was released in 2000. Blackberry Smartphone operates on Blackberry OS. The operating system is only available for blackberry Smartphone. The Smartphone uses the same operating OS irrespective of their hardware configuration. The Smartphone is also available to any of the network providers. Blackberry Smartphone uses applications from the app store known as App World. The main advantage of the BlackBerry Smartphone is its enhanced security. The Smartphone supports device encryption and encrypted communication (Blackberry, 2013).

At the moment, there are over 1 billion Smartphone worldwide. A survey has shown that one in every seven people owns a Smartphone. Blackberry Smartphone popularity online has been at 83% with 22% mentions as compared to other Smartphones in the market. Though the company have been well known for their full QWERTY keyboard Smartphones, the current Smartphones models are slightly different. BlackBerry Q10 has a 3.1 inches LED screen and a resolution of 720 by 720 pixels. The phone internal memory is 10GB and has both front and rear cameras. The Smartphone has a 2GB RAM and a 1.5GHZ dual-core processor. Blackberry Bold has a 2.8 inch LCD screen with 8GB internal storage memory. The Smartphone has a rear camera with 5MP and a single-core processor of 1.2GHZ. The blackberry curve 9630 is a 2.44-inch screen Smartphone with 1GB internal storage memory. The phone uses a single-core processor with 800 MHz and a 512MB RAM. The current Blackberry Z10 model is a full touch screen Smartphone. The most famous Smartphone by Blackberry is Blackberry classic, Passport and Z3. Blackberry classic has a 3.5 inches square-shaped screen. The phone has a full classic QWERTY keyboard as well as a navigation panel (Blackberry, 2014). The phone processor is a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and has a 2GB RAM. The phone has a 16 GB internal memory which is expandable to 128GB. The 2014 features that have been included in this Smartphone are; BB Hub, BB Assistant and BBM video calling. BlackBerry passport has a square screen with an aspect ratio of 1:1. The phone screen can show 60 characters per line. The phone has a 2.2GHZ quad processor and a 16MP camera. The Smartphone has a RAM of 3GB and a 3450mAh battery. The phone uses a 3 row QWERTY keyboard. BlackBerry Z3 is a full touch screen Smartphone. The Smartphone integrates a BB screen reader which is meant to help those with poor eyesight. The phone runs on the BlackBerry 10 OS (Blackberry, 2014).