What is the status of RIM today? RIM/BlackBerry share of the market has been sliding for several years far from being BlackBerry Nation, as written by Scott Elder in a Washington Post article (Eidler, 2015). Elder also refers to the handheld device as a “Crackberry” that in 2010 nearly 40 percent of the smartphones users owned a Blackberry. However, in 2011 BlackBerry share of the market had fallen to 20 percent while Apple and Android now held 70 percent of the smartphone market. What appealed to corporate companies is the security features of Blackberry and instant messaging (BBM) had always been a draw for loyal customers, but the bigger screens and greater selection of applications by Android and iPhone caused even loyal …show more content…
This once dominant innovative company held 43 percent of the market in 2010 has been reduced to 1.2 in June of 2015 according to recent comScore article (comScore, Inc., 2015). Apple released the first iPhone on June 29, 2007 at that time had a global subscriber base of over 9 million and showed no signs of slowing, so the half million iPhones sold the first weekend of release was not considered a threat. The next year Google launches its open source Android platform and Apple opens App Store and releases the iPhone 3G. That same year RIM launches BlackBerry Storm, the first touchscreen and lacked a keyboard; the model bombs. Apple continued to release at least one new model every year and in 2010 BlackBerry launches the Torch, a touchscreen phone with slide-out keyboard and improved browser. Nokia, once the largest smartphone vendor forms an alliance with Microsoft Corporation in February 2011. With the slumping revenue shareholders attempted to have co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie removed, in late 2011, they were not removed but both agreed to a pay cut to $1.00 each. Lazaridis and Balsillie step down in 2012 and replaced by Thorsten Heins. The company officially changes name in January of 2013 to BlackBerry help build the hype for the new BlackBerry10. Unfortunanly by August of the same year 4,500 employees were laid off and there was talk the company was up for …show more content…
Thorsten and leadership at BlackBerry were in the denial starting in 2007 with the iPhone was introduced by Apple. Blackberry also, relied heavily on corporate sales and contracts for revenue and did not focus on improving security and other features that were now inferior to other phones available. If security, size of the screen, and improved browsing had been improved along with the rest of the industry BlackBerry would possibly have a larger share of the market compared to the 1.2 percent in