Blackberry
Name:
Institution:
Blackberry
Blackberry is a communications leader in the mobile device industry. Established in 1984, the company changed the mobile phone sector when it introduced the first device in 1999. The device was a communicative pager and was unique as it was the first pager to enable two-way communication. The company introduced the modern smartphone in early 2003 with the main purpose of enabling mobile email services. The company operates under the brand symbol “BB” and “BBRY” under the Toronto stock exchange and NASDAQ respectively (Mittal & Gupta, 2010). The company is located at Waterloo, Ontario in Canada and has base offices located in Europe, Asia and Latin America. As of end year 2011, Blackberry sales accounted for 3% of worldwide mobile sales (Sweeny, 2009). The company focuses in the development of wireless mobile devices thus is classified to be existent in the Communicative Technology industry.
The
smart phone industry is intensely competitive, with competition being from two
areas. Companies that build the devices themselves like Nokia who are the
biggest developers in the industry, LG and Samsung. The other set of
competitors includes companies that develop operating systems that are intended
to be of use by other organizations. Blackberry develops its own operating
system, and is consequently in competition in developing an operating system
with large organizations such as Microsoft (Windows Phone) and Google
(Android). The sales of the company over the past five years have demonstrated
a negative graph. The sales of the latest models running on BB7 have fallen by
50% to 2.3 million units. By March 2014, the Blackberry proceeds had fallen by
a record 64% (Matt, 2014). The latest news suggests the company is developing
new handsets that run on the classic QWERTY keyboard in order to boost
revenues. The company is predicted to be profitable by 2016 (Matt, 2014).
Blackberry is a company that one can derive structures that can be used to turn
over a company from losses to profitability (Turbs & Gillett, 2011).
References
Matt, B. (2014). Blackberry. Blackberry loses its bread and butter as Bold and Curve sales finally collapse. Retrieved from http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/28/blackberry-q4-bb7-collapse
Mittal, K., & Gupta, S. (2010). BlackBerry for work: Productivity for professionals. New York: Apress.
Sweeny, A. (2009). BlackBerry planet: The story of Research in Motion and the little device that took the world by storm. Mississauga, Ont: John Wiley & Sons Canada.
Tubbs, G., & Gillett, T. (2011). Harvesting the Blackberry: An Insider’s Perspective. Wheatmark Inc.