Remember BlackBerry? These are the reasons for its disappearance

In the first decade of the 21st century, BlackBerry dominated the market widely, iPhones did not exist and Samsung did not yet manufacture Galaxy. The Canadian company revolutionized the smartphone market at that time, its phones were loved by many, mainly executives and office workers, it was common to see public figures showing their BlackBerry, from important politicians such as Barack Obama and Angela Merkel as well as celebrities like Kim Kardashian and popular Hollywood actors. Although BlackBerry focused on a business audience, its technology was accessible and useful to many people, in Latin America, it had 45% of the cell phone market in 2011, while in the United States this number was 14%, according to La Información.

To remember, between 2005 and 2009 BlackBerry offered numerous improvements in the world of mobile telephony, allowing you to comfortably browse the Internet from your cell phone either with a WiFi connection or a data plan, it was no longer necessary to spend so much money on SMS messages since it included the online messaging platform BlackBerry Messenger, it introduced a synchronization of calendar and contacts as well as a calendar and email access, a QWERTY keyboard adapted for a phone that also included a good camera and color screen. These innovations may seem insignificant today, but for those years BlackBerry was the first and the best, according to the BBC.

Their mistakes

Overconfidence

BlackBerry was the best seller, but when it comes to technology this can change quickly. In 2007 the Apple iPhone was released, a fairly innovative phone, without a physical keyboard but a full touch screen, which for BlackBerry executives was “crazy”. However, the Canadian company continued to dominate the market since the iPhone was significantly more expensive, although for BlackBerry executives it still seemed impossible to manufacture an iPhone at that price, since they considered that with these characteristics it should be even more expensive, according to HiperTextual.

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The statements of their managers and presentations of their devices were full of overconfidence, constantly bringing up figures that classified them as the best sellers, but beyond that, they did not finish adapting to the changes in the market driven by the users themselves. BlackBerry continued to use practically obsolete systems such as Adobe Flash to run the popular animations that appeared on the Internet, this caused many users to be unable to view content on websites due to lack of Flash or updates, despite the fact that at that time devices from other brands already used the basic HTML 5 language to accomplish this task without disturbing users.

Lack of innovation

BlackBerry was the most innovative at the time but with the emergence of new technologies and the growth of competition with Apple and Nokia, the Canadian company did not seem to do much, although they tried to join the trend of touch screens with the BlackBerry Storm, Bold 5 and Bold 6, the performance of these phones was not as expected and Apple's power in terms of performance was already demonstrated. In addition, Google and Apple were growing enormously with their app stores, however, BlackBerry had hardly any apps and when it introduced its store it was too late since the developers were already working for the American companies.

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In addition, BlackBerry never decided to take its instant messaging system further, since it could only be used by users of its company, which caused the appearance of WhatsApp to stomp and take over the market as the most widely used messaging phone app. Although Canadians highlighted the security of their system, this was an unattractive fact for consumers who found WhatsApp more useful.

Another important aspect that HiperTextual highlighted was that Canadians cared more about the technology they used than about a comfortable and intuitive user interface, while their competitors did so, like Samsung that emphasized how they could use their Galaxy hands-free thanks to the included smart functions, BlackBerry only emphasized that its operating system was based on the one used by robots sent to Mars.

End of their phones

These decisions, added to the errors that their devices were presenting, which were less and less functional for the business public, left BlackBerry far behind. In 2013 they only had 3% of the US market, their income began to drop to the point of losing almost a billion dollars due to lack of sales in 2014 according to El País, because while in the second quarter of 2014 BlackBerry sold 3.7 million phones, Apple would sell 9 million and Samsung 10 million.

Later, BlackBerry brought to the market a phone with an Android operating system, but it would not reach the necessary sales, so it would be the last cell phone to be manufactured by them, who left the smartphone market and focused instead on the design of cybersecurity software and other areas.