Blackberry is looking like it will become a case study of how not to do business. Once dominating the smartphone business, Blackberry has made poor decision after poor decision to lead it to its current state of disarray. One area where Blackberry has been consistent is their bad timing. The company has been late on product releases, late to market change, and now its bad timing is being observed with yesterday’s release of its messaging service BBM for iOS and Android. According to techcrunch.com:
“BlackBerry’s bad sense of timing persists. Old habits die hard. The latest case in point is a small example, but a telling one nonetheless. BlackBerry finally started rolling out its BBM messaging client to iOS and Android yesterday — weeks later than originally planned, after a botched earlier attempt. And years late from a market point of view. If BBM had launched on Android and iOS back in 2010 how many users might it have now? And how many might mobile messaging giants like WhatsApp not have?
“Yesterday was also the day Apple selected for its October iPad launch event. This date has been circulating as near-certified rumor since early October, and officially confirmed since October 15. Yet despite that highly unfortunate marketing clash — a David and Goliath one, when you’re going up against the hyperdrive of the Cupertino marketing machine — BlackBerry went ahead with its rescheduled BBM launch anyway. Why, Blackberry, why?”
Blackberry did have 10 million downloads in 24 hours, but was completely overshadowed by Apple’s iPad event. The Blackberry executive team is trying to salvage what is left of the company, and they’re currently looking for a buyer. The bad timing was also attributed to the fact that the last time the company tried to rollout BBM for iOS and Android, it was an epic failure, with users unable to download the app.
Unfortunately Blackberry may not be able to learn from its mistakes. With the current state of the company, if it doesn’t attract a buyer soon it may be broken up and sold for its parts.
