The next few months are critical for Canadian smartphone manufacturer, BlackBerry. The company has seen falling sales of its smartphones with the growing dominance of Android and iOS, and today, even Windows Phone has a bigger market share.
BlackBerry is now (as per Q1 2013 reports) occupying a very uncomfortable fourth position in terms of global shipments of smartphones bearing BlackBerry OS, with just Linux, Symbian and a few other not-so-popular mobile operating systems behind it. With the launch of Firefox OS, Sailfish OS, Tizen 2.0 and Ubuntu Touch all expected by the end of the year, BlackBerry will have some serious competition from both above and below.
BlackBerry (formerly RIM), has been trying hard for past few years to once again gain a foothold in the highly competitive smartphone segment. The company even tried a hand at tablets, with the PlayBook, though unfortunately, despite an interesting new OS and interface, and killer hardware, its tablet offering failed to gain market share for the company.
BlackBerry 10 OS, and the new crop of devices on the platform (the Z10 and Q10), were hoped to be the company’s escape-from-bankruptcy routes. The success of the OS, which while favourably reviewed, depends on its devices and ecosystem, and once again, problems have arisen on this front. The devices have been seriously overpriced in many markets, crippling the company’s chances at high-volume sales. BlackBerry World also still has very limited content when compared to Google Play, iTunes, and even Windows Phone Marketplace.
The company has for sometime realized that its services (BBM, BIS) are possibly its biggest selling points, but are limited to BlackBerry’s own platforms. Thus, the company has for a while been trying to bring its services to other platforms, and had taken its first steps in this direction with the launch of the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion device management tool for corporations, helping company administrators manage multiple mobile devices with a single-tool. To answer the app ecosystem problem, BlackBerry has been trying to get Android and Java app compatibility on its operating systems, and even provide an easy porting method for developers to simply migrate their apps from other platforms.
The latest news once again points to wider app compatibility in the new version of BlackBerry 10 OS, and hopefully, this will finally give potential customers another attractive reason to choose the BlackBerry platform.
Some of its strategies have paid off handsomely, such as the massive adoption of entry-level BlackBerry smartphones in developing markets like India and Indonesia, with the BlackBerry Messenger ecosystem being the biggest drive for users. Realizing the potential of this service, which currently has no competitor that is as feature-filled and versatile, BlackBerry announced BBM for Android and iOS, due sometime in 2013.
With this, the company hopes to get wide-scale cross-platform adoption of the BBM ecosystem, which if free on other platforms, could potentially also generate revenue from ads. However, many critics of the move consider it to be a shot in the foot, saying that now BlackBerry is taking away the potential customer’s biggest incentive to use the company’s devices and platforms, by offering it on other platforms.
When we heard the news, we were also surprised by the move, and how BlackBerry intended to utilize the various implications for its benefit. We asked our fans, readers and subscribers what they felt about the company’s decision to offer BBM for Android and iOS, and we received over 800 responses.
We asked: ‘Do you think BlackBerry made a good business decision by introducing BBM for both Android and iOS?’ 63% (526 votes) of the poll-takers chose ‘Yes,’ quite obviously indicating the majority felt BBM’s cross-platform nature would be beneficial for the company.
30% (245 votes) of the poll-takers chose ‘No’, showing a significant portion of the poll takers felt the move would be more harmful than beneficial, while 7% (57 votes) of the respondents chose ‘Can’t say’.
Check out the poll results in graphical form below. You can check out previous poll results, here. Do also share your views on our latest poll, where we ask you: “Apple calls iOS 7 the most significant change to the operating system since the first iPhone. Do you agree?”