How the once-mighty have fallen. Today, in a last- ditch attempt to keep up, BlackBerry launched their first Android phone, but the grave has been already been dug.
There was once a time when the BlackBerry was a badge of corporate honour. A coveted medal that said you had finally made it to the lofty highs of middle management. No more Greggs for you, now you were a destined for better things, you ate Pret.
Back before the credit crunch, the smart money always carried a Berry. Each time that familiar red light flashed it told the world you were important enough to be reached anywhere, anytime. BlackBerry built a loyal following with financial professionals, even those who worked in tech clung onto theirs despite vastly better alternatives being available on the market.
“I guess once upon a time investors and other high-falutin’ types used BlackBerries all the time” recalls Suranga Chandratillake, Partner at Balderton Capital in an interview with The Memo.
“Those were the heady days when Shakira first drew our attention to the alleged honesty of hips, and Apple hadn’t yet released a phone. It was, in other words, a long time ago.”
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Back then even Shakira’s hips paid a heavy price for the heavy burden of carrying a BlackBerry. While holidaying in South Africa in 2012, the Latin American superstar was attacked by a sea lion after her beloved Canadian smartphone was mistaken for “some sort of fish” when the beast took offence at her choice of phone.
Shakira lived to tell the tale, but even back then, the sea lions knew the future for BlackBerry looked bleak.
Deserted by celebrities
Sadly Shakira wasn’t the last celebrity to cling onto their Berry for dear life. Who could forget the company’s greatest ever endorsement when it appointed Alicia Keys as its Creative Director. The relationship lasted little longer than a phone contract did back then and they swiftly parted ways after just a year of trying to turn things around.
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Things went from bad to worse for Canada’s best known tech export that once had the ever-memorable parent company known as “RIM”, making it the butt of many of an office joke.
Even the investor community, once the brand’s biggest fans, deserted in their droves. Hussein Kanji has invested in some of the smartest up and coming tech businesses around including food delivery service Deliveroo. He gave up on the company after a disappointing experience with the much unloved Q10, which was plagued by buggy software.
Kanji swiftly swapped his for an iPhone paired with Typo, a little-known case that bolts a BlackBerry-like keyboard onto Apple’s iPhone, giving him the best of both worlds.
But with revenues tumbling, BlackBerry were not going to let a plucky upstart like Typo eat into their declining market share. The company reacted in the only sensible way, and entered into two lawsuits, banning the once-loved accessory from sale. This cost the brand dearly and lost them once-loyal fans like Kanji:
“I’m out of BlackBerry. Won’t ever pick one up again.”
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Today BlackBerry hammered the final nail in its own coffin with a Bold (sorry) new Android-based device. The awkwardly-named BlackBerry Priv marries BlackBerry’s brilliant keyboard with one of the world’s least secure mobile operating systems targeting it squarely at businesspeople. What could possibly go wrong?
This £580 phone is the company’s first foray into the world of Android, which will open it up to Google’s back catalogue of millions of apps previously unavailable to the BlackBerry platform. But even James Bond won’t touch Android and this new choice of operating system could further alienate it from its fans. “I’ve tried Android before and its a poor man’s iOS, it’s worse than Windows in comparison to a Mac” says Kanji.
Problem is, even adding Android does not hide the fact the world has moved on.
The BlackBerry once earned the nickname ‘Crackberry’ for its addictive nature which had businesspeople hooked to it day and night, but now our work lives have changed for the better. We are creative collaborative workers that care about things like mindfulness, not a ball and chain with a flashing red light. The never-ending stream of email has no place in our modern lives. It drowns us, makes us deeply unproductive and does not make us smarter or happier.
The BlackBerry may still boast the best keyboard design on the planet, but it is a tool for an age gone by.
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