Blackberry made a large impact on the mobile market in the early years of its growth. It has created a large variety of phones ranging from QWERTY keypad ones to smartphones and tablets. The issue was that recently with the increased demand of Apple, Samsung and other known brand phones, blackberry lost a large amount of market share and could not keep up with the demand of other brand phones since around 2009. This article shows how the new CEO John Chen, after coming into the position has worked to solve this issue and help blackberry make a recovery from a failed buyout in the market. Recently the Ontario teachers’ pension bought almost 7.8 million shares of BlackBerry Ltd. (BB) in the third quarter, giving Chen’s strategy a vote of confidence. To start making profit from next year Chen has employed a range of strategies ranging from outsourcing manufacturing to selling real estate and focusing on core business customers. All these strategies have proved successful and gained investor confidence as demonstrated by the buying of shares, and have put Chen on the path to recover blackberry from a failed buyout to having it competing with the Nasdaq Composite Index this year for the first time since 2009 and possibly even beating it. I found this article encouraging in how it shows that different type of leadership and strategies can help a business potentially prosper in some cases, or fail in others. These decisions of business strategy are very crucial and operational management is key to a business’s chances of success. Blackberry, through this come back has shown its potential for market strength and if it keeps attracting investors and stock investments at this rate, I see potential in the business’s success in the future if Chens projected profits for next year are realized.
Blackberry CEO John Chen standing in front of the company Logo.
Source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-07/blackberry-gets-vote-of-confidence-from-ontario-teachers.html