If you are interested in Tech, probably one of the most breaking news recently is BlackBerry will be totally bought out. Their new phones Z10 and Q10 are not selling well and the company is kicked out of the smartphone game. Maybe BlackBerry is never good for consumer market, at least in North America. However, BlackBerry is hot sale in Southeast Asia and Africa market, my question is why they just ignore the second largest economic entity-Chinese market?
I understand that their could be a number of entry barriers and competitors for BlackBerry in Chinese market, but I still could see some opportunities for the company to come back to the game.
Consumer Market:
1. Large amount of population and rapid growing of smart phone market. If you want to do consumer business, you need to find where people are. Chinese people have the higher buying power than India and Southeast Asia counties. Counties like UK, they call it hot sale is about selling 1000+ BlackBerry devices during weekend. In China, hot sale can be millions of devices.
2. Strong brand image recognition. Frankly, due to TV, Hollywood movie and newspaper exposure, BlackBerry is getting a high brand recognition in China even without any marketing campaign. People have the idea that BlackBerry used to compete with Apple. Also, because of BlackBerry got the US government contract and President Obama is a loyal BlackBerry fan, this gives a lot of impression to normal Chinese consumers and they want to know more about this product. This could be at lease one huge selling chance.
3. Niche player in high end market. Vertu is a very high end cellphone company which pricing its phones around $6000 dollars, but it still can sell thousands of device every year. There are a group of people in China who want to be different, and don’t like to use Apple and Android devices. They need smartphones to differentiate themselves from others. BlackBerry can be a perfect maker for those people. Actually, Blackberry already had a phone partner with Proche Design and price around $2000 dollars. BlackBerry need a few more these products and targeting for Chinese high end market. For example, partner with LV and Channel for the phone design as well as accessories.
