Although it’s been nothing compared to the Iphone 6 announcement in September, there has been some buzz around the market of the new Blackberry Passport release, which raises some questions about whether or not the Blackberry Passport can help the company make a comeback into the competitive smartphone industry. Its no news that the Canadian phone maker has become irrelevant to the game in the last few year, and reviewers of the Passport has not been helping its declining reputation either. I Personally, thought it was interesting to note that there are several major contributing factors to why it’s nearly impossible to revive Blackberry at this point, relating back to several key ideas that we’ve discussed in class.
For one, Blackberry can’t seem to convince App makers to write any apps for the Blackberry App store, compared to Android OS and Apple, Blackberry has a meager 100,000 app count. The most popular apps currently such as Instagram, Vine, YouTube, and Google maps doesn’t even have an official App program for the Blackberry. Which greatly reduces its competitiveness against Androids and Apple.
Secondly, one of Blackberry’s competitive advantage used to be the BBM for instant messaging, but in the recent years new instant messaging platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and Wechat has become widely popular especially on the Android and Apple devices, with even more advanced features than BBM, therefore making it more difficult for Blackberry to retain its subscribers.
Lastly, the change of consumer preference in the last few years has evolved towards touchscreen handheld devices. The keyboard for Blackberry just isn’t as impressive as it used to be. The most popular phones on the market currently are all touchscreens only, reviewers actually find the keyboard on the blackberry to be a nuisance rather than a feature.
Blackberry’s attempt at a differentiation strategy seems to be driving consumers away rather than the opposite. Its highly unlikely that the Blackberry Passport, in my opinion, be any more different than the Z10 or Q10 launch of last year. It doesn’t look like it will make an impressive comeback any time soon, not in 2014 anyways.
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