Will BlackBerry ever resurface as the preferred business smartphone?

Most of us can’t help but notice how BlackBerry the once-dominant Canadian smartphone maker is desperately trying to get back into the game – the one that it lost to the iPhone and several Androids.

We witnessed the transition of BlackBerry from being the quintessential and coveted smartphone, to being an insignificant number in the whole smartphone pie. Is it too late for BlackBerry to regain lost share? We take a look at the situation, from a complete gadget-critic’s point of view.

What went wrong?

We don’t want to keep harping on the fact that BB was late to react to the first iPhone, but that’s where it all began. The first iPhone debuted in mid-2007; the Z10 arrived in January 2013.

So while Z10 with the new OS was late to arrive in the premium smartphone market, BlackBerry was ousted in the budget and mid-range segment by a number of Android devices.

Sure, for a BlackBerry, the Z10 was good – we loved the gesture based navigation, the build quality and the BlackBerry Hub (the all-encompassing notification hub). The camera just about cut it, and screen quality too was decent. And, of course, a reworked BBM was appreciated.

The app ecosystem, however, seriously lacked options for users. For a while, we cut BB some slack, agreeing that it was still too early for the new OS to have as many apps as say iOS or Android.

But when you’re in a market that’s as competitive as this, you can’t use the newbie excuse for long. And BB failed to work on it even by the time Q10 and Q5 were rolled out.

And then there was the price – even some hardcore BB fans were seen shaking their heads in disbelief after learning about the price (considering what the device offered). For a consumer, it just didn’t make sense to pay ?40,000 plus for a BB handset with features that they could get on a device that was significantly less expensive. That was just too much for a smartphone with BBM (WhatsApp wasn’t present on the ecosystem initially). Just those few initial bad notes ruined what could’ve been BB’s symphony of survival.

Bad balancing

The devices that BlackBerry claimed were made to strike the perfect balance between ‘work and life, just fell short on the ‘life’ part. BlackBerry was, and will always be known for its secure BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES), which was the reason why BB became the must-have corporate phone in the first place. But then once you got back home, the BB10 device just wasn’t enough fun.

And now even though the prices for Z10, Q10 and Q5 have been slashed, BlackBerry still doesn’t have enough market share for its BB10 devices. That’s primarily because office mails and apps can be installed and synced on other smartphones too, say an iPhone or an HTC One.

What’s next?

With Z30, BlackBerry proved that it can keep up at least in the hardware department – the 5-inch device comes with a brilliant screen and good processing power for hardcore multitasking. But hardware isn’t the only thing that matters – a smartphone should be fun as well.

It’s time BlackBerry created something new, because on the ‘life’ part of their smartphones, they should have something more than BBM to show off (and that isn’t exclusive any more either).

It needs a sort of reinvention – it needs to come out and offer new features – features that are new, practical, and those that the customers can readily fall in love with. The company really needs to ask this question to itself once before they roll out every device – what will this device offer that its competition doesn’t have.

Before its decline, BB had become a very popular device with younger customers. Even if the company decides to make its way through that price segment, it has some serious competition, in form of the new Nokia X series and seriously powerful budget smartphones such as Moto G.

We see a tiny ray of hope in the form of BlackBerry’s announcement about two new devices, the Z3 and Q20 at MWC this year. While these two devices will hit the Indonesian markets soon, there’s no word on these devices’ pricing and availability in other markets, including India.

With migrating loyalties amongst the buyers of today, for BlackBerry, time is everything. If it brings out either the Z3 or the Q20 right away, it might pick up sales in markets where there’s still some BB presence left. If it waits for Christmas, well, we don’t think BB10 will turn two.