For BlackBerry brand, this is definitely not the best of times.
Once upon a time, the BlackBerry smart
phone was the device to ‘beat.’ From inception, the manufacturers,
formerly known as Research in Motion, desired to fashion their device
after an office assistant because it afforded users the benefit of
sending and receiving emails on the go.
To the business man, it was like a mini
office and to the young at heart, the device’s star attraction, the
BlackBerry Messenger, ensured that they stayed in touch and chat with
their friends and relatives on the platform for free.
So enormous was the power of the BB that
it was once widely referred to as “CrackBerry’ in the US because of its
addictive nature. By 2006, ‘Crackberry’ became so widespread that it
made its way into the Webster’s New World College Dictionary as the ‘New
Word of the Year’.
Many Nigerians used to fall over one
another in a scramble to outdo ‘competition’ by securing the highly
priced models of the phone, the Bold, Touch and later on-Porshe — which was retailed for as much as N600,000.
So highly priced were some of its models
then that the average Nigerian user opted for the ‘London-used’ models
which typically sold for nearly half the price of the brand new.
Surprisingly, some users have refused to let go of their prized possessions, in spite of the competition.
Yet, today, BlackBerry is faced with an
outstanding threat, especially coming from its biggest competitors – the
IPhone and Android.
BlackBerry was once king, up until six
years ago, when Apple released the first iPhone and upstaged RIM’s
long-held strategy of appealing primarily to ‘email-addicted
professionals’.
While the fight for its own fair share
of the very competitive Smartphone market actually began a few years
back, the dwindling fortunes of the device, which was once most popular
in the Carribeans and Latin America, came to the fore with the recent
decision to sell its unique BBM mobile social network to Android and
iPhone.
Despite the introduction of its most
recent models, Z30, Z10,Q10 and Q5, the company has been unable to
relieve its once ‘glorious years.’ Just on Monday, a Toronto, Canada-
based financial holdings company, the Fairfax conglomerate, agreed to
acquire BlackBerry in a deal worth $4.7bn, both companies announced.
According to mashable.com, the conglomerate has agreed to pay $9 per share for the beleaguered mobile company — a premium of about 9 per cent.
After the acquisition plans fell
through, BlackBerry changed strategies and its CEO. On Monday, it was
announced that the COO, CMO and CFO had been replaced.
News of the takeover came barely two
days after BlackBerry announced it was cutting 4,500 jobs — about 35 per
cent of its workforce — and taking a loss of nearly $1bn in its second
quarter. At its peak in mid-2007, BlackBerry was worth more than
$100bn. With this move, marketing experts say there may just be some
cheering news in sight, that is, if the deal sails through successfully
for both parties.
They say the origin of the company’s
woes can be traced to the fact that it failed to anticipate and respond
quickly to the threats posed by Android and the iPhone.
Interestingly, the result of a study
says some of the comments from three per cent of Blackberry users in
Nigeria, on Twitter and Facebook, have been somewhat sympathetic to the
company’s dwindling fortunes.
A certain Emeka Okoye tweeted, saying,
“Nigerian BlackBerry users are very loyal to the brand but unfortunately
it is now a burning platform. BBM’s value is only for the enterprise.”
Moneylabi, on the other hand, simply
peeped at the future in a tweet which read, “The total death of
BlackBerry phones will be when Nigerian network providers roll out a
standard and favourable browsing plan for Android users.”
Lammrniyi also lent his voice to the
issue, saying, “One of the major functions of the laptop in Nigeria is
to charge BlackBerry phones. Nigeria has the most BlackBerry users in
Africa and the fifth most in the world.”
An interesting related tweet, which did not go unnoticed was one by @secondcoming: “BlackBerry bold 3 #Warri now N9,000”.
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