4,500 jobs to be cut, second quarter net loss of $965 million (£600 Million) and a handset that had the companies hopes pinned on selling incredibly poorly – a complete recipe for disaster by the sounds of it!! BlackBerry was once at the forefront of the mobile industry with handsets loved by all and a brand that was known for its quality. But it all went wrong when Apple released the iPhone and consumers saw just was possible. BlackBerry tried to stick with their tried and tested methods and offerings but was rapidly left behind. Poorly thought out and planned new offerings burned up money and consumer good will which has slowly left this once giant a broken and shattered shadow of its former self.
The Z10 smartphone was supposed to be the dawn of a new era for BlackBerry but sales have been so bad that the company have been forced to write off $934 million in the second quarter to accord for its tragic performance. Released after many delays in January 2013 the phone completely failed to enthuse or gain consumers attention the result of which most people have never even seen one in the flesh! $3.1 billion in sales were achieved in 2012 but for the same quarter this year nearly 50% of that has disappeared to see sales of only $1.6 billion. It wasn’t just money generated that fell by half as handset figures dropped from 7.4 million shipments to 3.7 million in only 12 months. To put that in perspective Apple’s new iPhone 5S & 5C sold 9 million over a two day weekend…
Can BlackBerry keep up this rate of lose before the company is broken up and sold in pieces or even worse close entirely? If we played devil’s advocate and used the 2012-13 sales figures as a starting point then within 6 years BlackBerry would have almost nothing left coming in. Given these recent announcements of catastrophically poor sales and staff cuts BlackBerry’s former lifeline of enterprise and business users will surely shy away from having anything to do with the ex-RiM branded company so just what can BlackBerry hope to do to save the company? Sell… find a rich sugar daddy and sell up just like Nokia have done with Microsoft. Is there anyone out there who would buy them though? If things keep going the way they are then the pool of potential suitors will slowly drain away until the well has run completely dry.
