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Blackberry is suing Kik Interactive, an instant-messaging application which was started by Ted Livingston-a former co-0p student of Blackberry. The reason for this lawsuit is because Mr.Livingston’s Kik app soon surpassed Blackberry’s BBM.
In my opinion, I believe that Blackberry is suing Kik Interactive because they are jealous of their success and are greatly regretting their decision. However, I understand that Blackberry wanted to keep BBM to only blackberry phones because of two reasons. Reason number one is because users who want to use BBM would be forced to buy from Blackberry. Reason number two is because BBM is one of Blackberry’s major “point of differentiation.” Blackberry loses greatly to other companies, such as Samsung and Apple, when it comes to similar points of parity such as; apps, system software and system specifications. In terms of Porter’s Five force analysis, we can see that Blackberry is exercising their “supplier power” by suing Kik and is creating a greater “barrier of entry” for Kik Interactive. Kik Interactive is a major “threat of substitute” because consumers no longer need to buy from Blackberry to have the BBM experience, they can just buy any Android or Apple product.
After this discussion, I feel that Blackberry has three options. One to win the lawsuit with Kik Interactive(unlikely), or, two, to establish a new point of differentiation of their blackberry products(time consuming), and, three, to launch their BBM on all platforms and juice as much out of the market for instant messaging as possible(most likely).