As a loyal Blackberry user myself, I definitely experienced firsthand how quickly Blackberry users declined. It seemed like each day I was losing a handful of BBM contacts to their new iPhones or Androids. Recently, when BBM was made available on other phones, I was excited to see my contacts begin to return.

With Blackberry no longer selling their company, this is a new direction they have taken and it seems to have been successful. After making BBM available to competing brands of cell phones, over 20 millions new users joined the network, bringing the total number of users over 80 million. But one has to wonder if the excitement                                                                                          will last.  And it is a valid question.

Although user numbers seems promising, I have to wonder what it will really do for the company. First of all, BBM does not bring any monetary benefit to Blackberry. Also, thinking of Porter’s Five Forces, there is a strong threat of substitutes for BBM such as imessage, Snapchat, or simply texting. Even the exciting BBM video is rivalled by iPhone’s “facetime”. As one of my friends simply put it, “Why would you BBM someone who has an iPhone?”.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/blackberry-boasts-of-smashing-success-with-20-million-new-bbm-users/article15134557/

These days, when an artist releases new music, getting it for free is just a click away. Within the music industry, this has been perceived as a scary prospect and major problem to tackle; however, recent studies from The London School of Economics and Political Science prove otherwise.

The graph below shows the results form a study done by The London School of Economics and Political Science. It proves that contrary to popular belief, the music industry is doing just fine. In fact, 2012 was the first year in over a decade that sales around the world had an upward trend[1].

So, if free music downloads are becoming more readily available each year, then why is the state of the music industry actually improving? The study showed that the less people tend to spend towards buying records, the more they put into other areas such as live entertainment and merchandise. With people using the Internet for streaming, music is actually able to reach more people than it would if people had to pay. In fact, the Internet has proven to be an extremely useful marketing tool.

U.K. singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran recently stated during a radio interview that he was currently the most illegally downloaded artist. Although an artist may find this troubling, Ed was instead thrilled, saying that the more people’s iPod’s he could be on the better (given he was still making a living).

Despite thoughts that piracy and online streaming are severely detrimental to the music industry, they have actually become a great way to promote artists and gain fans, as well as allow consumers to place more cash in other areas of the industry.

In 2012, Michael Hallatt of Vancouver B.C. had a genius idea, and even amidst being sued by a huge company, has never looked back.

Trader Joe’s is an extremely popular store in the United States, selling mainly healthy and organic foods at affordable prices. With health food prices through the roof in Canadian stores such as Whole Foods, it’s no surprise that many Canadians drive across the border on a regular basis to save on groceries.

After visiting Trader Joe’s several times himself, Hallatt had the idea to open up a Trader Joe’s in Canada, in order to accommodate Canadians who love the brand.
This is when Pirate Joe’s was born. Hallatt began to make weekly trips to Bellingham to stock up on Trader Joe’s products, sometimes spending up to $5,000 in one trip[1]. He brought these items back to Vancouver and began selling them at a marked up price.

Upon hearing of Hallatt’s business ventures, Trader Joe’s filed a lawsuit and immediately banned Hallatt from entering their stores. Instead of halting his business, Hallatt simply sent friends down to the states to complete the shopping for him. Just this week, Hallatt came out of this lawsuit on top, and will be allowed to continue to run Pirate Joe’s.

Trader Joe’s argued that this was hurting their brand, however it’s possible that the lawsuit they came up with themselves may have hurt their brand even more. Trader Joe’s was attempting to bring down the ‘little guy’, which from a PR perspective just looks bad. If Canadian customers really are responsible for 40% of Trader Joe’s purchases in Bellingham locations, maybe it actually was time for Trader Joe’s to branch across the border[2]. Instead of creating a lawsuit, they could have welcomed the driven and passionate man behind Pirate Joe’s into their company, and had him be a part of opening their first Canadian location.