BlackBerry is one of the most recognizable names in the cell phone world and one of the most revolutionary brands of our time. Known for producing the Blackberry smartphone, which was the easiest portable email reader at the time it debuted, RIM achieved stardom in the technology universe.
After enjoying many years of dominance at the pinnacle of the cell phone mountain. BlackBerry has recently slipped off the peak and fallen far behind more innovative competitors such as Apple’s iPhone and smartphones that run on the Android operating system.
Although the BlackBerry was once the undisputed king of the smartphone, is it nearing its end at the hands of more capable devices? Read more about how the Amazon Kindle causes Problems For Blackberry Playbook Sales.
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Era of the CrackBerry
The BlackBerry smartphone gained widespread fame for being the first handheld device to make email access easy and convenient for users no matter where they were. This was a huge improvement over the limited internet capabilities of the original personal digital assistants, or PDAs. While PDAs served as great organizational tools, they were somewhat restricted to that purpose.
Most PDAs had various office-related functions including: an appointment calendar, to-do list, address book, calculator, and notetaking application. Email and internet access were limited to higher-end models, and they weren’t great at these functions either. Fortunately, RIM solved this problem with BlackBerry’s easy internet access and more advanced features, and the product became so hot that people couldn’t stop buying or using them. This new smartphone addiction resulted in the nickname of “CrackBerry.”
By the time that BlackBerry had caught on with the masses, regular talk-and-text phones had already fallen out of favor with most users. They were simply too simple and were pushed aside by tech-geeks everywhere, suffering the same fate as the once revolutionary PDA. Although BlackBerry was at the top of its game, other rivals quickly surfaced with even more cutting-edge technologies packed into their products.
The RIM ‘s and BlackBerry ‘s Beginning of the End
RIM and BlackBerry enjoyed great success from 2002 to about 2009 when Apple’s high-tech smartphone began converting the masses. The iPhone was not only sleeker and sexier, it offered a much more advanced operating system with many more features and an internet speed and layout that mimicked that of a laptop computer very well.
The iPhone was just superior to the BlackBerry in almost every way, and sadly, RIM never managed to catch up with the technology trendsetting done by Apple.
Other companies began producing smartphones that were bigger and badder than those already on the market. The Windows and Android smartphones proved to be far superior to the BlackBerry in nearly every respect.
The ability of these rivals to do video calls, play music, games, watch movies, instant message, and access the internet to download hundreds of other applications that offered hundreds of other uses left BlackBerry in the dust.
Is the BlackBerry dying?
To put it simply, yes. According to theweek.com, RIM was worth over 29 billion dollars at its prime, but that value has shrunk to just over 7 billion today. The company has been reported to fail at meeting sales expectations for five consecutive quarters. The majority of current BlackBerry users determined that they would switch to another platform within the next year.
There have even been rumors that company CEOs are talking about selling the business so they don’t lose everything. Unfortunately, the main problem lies in RIM’s failure to keep up with the latest smartphone technologies. Since BlackBerry phones are now limited in function, users will move on to a platform that can do more for the same amount of money.
Hardcore BlackBerry fans still exist, however, and many remain true to their beloved hand devices. Businessmen and other fans of the smartphone argue that the full keyboard is the biggest pro of the BlackBerry. They are easy to type quickly with, reliable, and more familiar to most than phones with a digital keyboard. Supporters of the BlackBerry feel that it’s ease of use makes it an efficient machine that doesn’t have extra bells and whistles.
Does the BlackBerry have a future in our world? Unless they catch up with competitors or come up with a new and unique feature, RIM will only continue to exist in our memories.