Not willing to embrace new hardware formats • QWERTY keyboard - Blackberry's market uniqueness V/S a touch screen device

Not recognized much earlier that consumer desires were changing. • In the early days, Blackberry won favour due to the robust security of features such as the company's email

solution. While this worked well for wooing a corporate market, Blackberry failed to recognize that sexy features were quickly taking precedence over software security in the mind of an average consumer.

Could have made more fundamental changes to its operating system.• Rivals releasing new operating systems for their devices V/S the company lacking enough funding and

coordination to develop its OS properly. The company has already suffered from using the outdated version of OS on its phone and multiple delays of new OS introduction.

Did not recognize the shift• Could have better recognized the threat posed by the Bring your Own Device shift.

• BlackBerry does well in the communication department, but lacks gaming and entertainment experience

• China is considered the biggest and fastest growing nation when it comes to adoption of smartphones

• Inability to market the brand. BlackBerry’s brand was known for the market long before Apple’s iPhone launch or Samsung’s Galaxy success. When the iPhone was launched, RIM had a better quality BlackBerry phone in the market, enjoyed larger sales and greater brand reputation but was unable to build on that due to poor marketing efforts

• Low amount of Apps : Low amount of apps in store deters customers from buying the phone or the tablets.

• Dependence on Corporate and Government Contracts : Company is not guaranteed to receive long-term contracts from the government and a loss of contract with at least one government agency or corporate results in substantially lower sales.

• Poor presence in the tablet market RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet - an unsuccessful effort to enter the tablet market. Apple or Samsung enjoy significant income and profit growth due to the tablet sales.

• 1. It isn't mandatory any more

BlackBerry’s uniqueness - it's end-to-end secure messaging - gained it armies of enterprise users in governments, the public sector, and companies large and small. The good news is that it is hard for these organisations to reverse their decision to use BlackBerry.

However, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server software - required and installed in those aforementioned office environments - is no longer unique in its field. Corporates peering at Blackberry OS 10 are told that if you haven’t got BlackBerry servers, don’t worry. ActiveSync has won the push email battle, and BlackBerry competes around it on management controls, its own social network (aka BlackBerry Messenger) and to a lesser extent application deployment. I can’t see the public sector and government customers moving terribly quickly.

2. The middle-class has fled

Ordinary punters using TCOKARIM*'s handsets are either on prepay deals or low-value monthly contracts, or they're in emerging markets. The "middle-class" smartphone user willing to shell out at least £30 a month on a smartphone probably moved away three years ago. At long last, with BlackBerry OS 10, the company is in a position to win them back - imaging and music are up to par with the competition, for instance.

Which leaves what, exactly, is the BlackBerry differentiator? BBM, presumably. And questions remain whether the attractive new operating system (which seems to require 2GB of RAM) can meet the low-earning punters half way. It is possible to carve out margins in ferociously competitive emerging markets - we've seen Nokia do a terrific job in Asia - but nothing yet announced by TCOKARIM satisfies that segment, yet. We need to see low-cost up-to-date 'Berries soon.

3. Apps, apps, and apps

BB OS 10 is a brand-new platform playing in a market where phones are chosen on the availability of lifestyle apps. I hear anecdotally that the largest reason cited for returns on Windows Phone is the lack of applications in the Windows Store. At launch, BlackBerry promised a list of well-known names, including the Kindle e-book viewer and voice-chat tool Skype, being ported to the new platform. But Windows Phone can boast Skype and Kindle apps too - and NetFlix - and that evidently isn't enough to move the needle. Facebook's gateway drug - the duopoly has Instagram - is still a deal-breaker.

•4. We're still live guinea pigs for BlackBerry OS 10

BB10 today doesn’t boost productivity for power users. It needs to be tweaked for them so they can easily switch between tasks.

5. BIS bashed, boshed?

The new strategy makes BlackBerry Internet Service - which neatly routes encrypted email and other mobile data through BlackBerry's systems - optional, and this may cause uncertainty and confusion that BlackBerry really doesn't need. The plus side is that you don't need a BlackBerry-provisioned SIM to enjoy using a BlackBerry phone with BBM: any carrier's mobile-data-enabled SIM will do.

But this means that those upgrading to the new Z10 and Q10 phones (the first handsets powered by BlackBerry OS 10) are now swimming in the same shark-infested waters as everyone else. For example, will mobile networks count your BBM traffic as part of your 3G or 4G data usage?

This remains to be seen, and operators who are rooting for BlackBerry as a third platform will have to step up and help here with attractive bundles and clear assurances. This is a price conscious bit of the market - they don't want nasty surprises.

Solutions• Will SME be the rising star for BlackBerry?• The SME segment in India, given its huge geographical spread, and cultural and

business complexity, often proves to be a tough nut to crack for most vendors.

• And RIM is not the first one among the mobile vendors to woo SMEs• For eg : In the past, Nokia had launched a GPRS-compatible mobile order management

system, Nokia Tej. The solution is reported to have been purchased by over 100 SME customers, especially in the distribution and logistics segments, but its success at large still remains to be seen. What’s more, Nokia has been buffeted by the Android wave more than any other handset vendor.

• However, if RIM plays its cards right, it could have a game-changer on its hands. A lot will also depend on how the new partner, Getit Infoservices, is able to lend support. As of now, the company seems gung-ho about the initiative. Says CEO Sidharth Gupta, “Today most businesses use email extensively, especially through mobile devices. The partnership with RIM will help our customers achieve enhanced mobile productivity.”

3rd party apps would save blackberry

• The major ones that are all ready available on multiple platforms would anyway. I have read that some people would claim that a BlackBerry in the phone world is what a BMW is within the auto industry. That may be true, and if it is great, than that would mean that native 3rd party apps is gasoline to our BlackBerry bmws. No matter how awesome the car is if you don't put gas in your beautiful BMW it will lose most of its functionality.

• A lot of people on here state that they don't need apps, or they are happy with the apps that are available which is nice to know, but over 90% of the market find native 3rd party apps (not games necessarily just apps, and services) important when choosing a phone.

THE Z10 ISSUE

• The price of the Z10 should have come down way before.

• There's already too much competition in the market, from both Android and Windows. Smartphones like iPhone—with exciting and compelling features are already there in the market at this price-point and hence it is going to be really challenging for Q10 to compete. BlackBerry needs a quality device at the price tag of around Rs 30,000,"

By going private, Blackberry may buy time to fix itself

• A tentative deal to take BlackBerry Ltd private will not necessarily resolve challenges that pushed the smartphone maker into a corner in the first place, but it gives the struggling company some breathing room.

• "It potentially buys the company time."What it doesn't solve is, what's the long-term strategy for Blackberry." BlackBerry virtually created a lucrative professional market for email devices, but rivals have muscled in and Apple Inc's iPhone has set a new gold standard for consumers.

Some more solutions• The playstore in samsung and app store in apple has better

applications and games as compared to the blackberry app world. A Lot of well known applications like instagram etc are not compatible with the blackberry phone which serves as a major drawback to users who are tech friendly. 

• With an exception of os10 the rest of the BlackBerry os do not have a lot of applications like skype etc.

• Battery life of the BlackBerry needs major improvement and a feature of battery saver mode would help it survive in the market.

• Quality improvement of the trackpad or the trackball is needed because it spoils easily.

• The charger of the blackberry Q5, Z10, Q10 is very small and people are not content with the same

Please name this slide someone• On Blackberry’s route back to its roots (enterprise), one factor must remain extremely crucial,

maintaining a ‘cool’ quotient that makes its comeback different from the first time around wherein it was positioned as a diehard enterprise handset. Maintaining this cool quotient will help not to alienate the overall audience.

• • In fact, Blackberry was recently voted the ‘Coolest’ Brand by South Africa’s youth. Keeping this in mind,

in India, Blackberry needs to start interacting with its audiences in more experiential environments. • • The brand has remained rather inactive within the Indian sponsorship arena. With several other

smartphone brands owning their audiences via genre-based festivals, there lies a strong opportunity for Blackberry to reactivate the concert tour space (*Pop/Rock/R&B) in India. After all, Blackberry entered the sponsorship arena for the first time with John Mayer’s North American Tour in 2007, this to help the launch of its Curve that intended to involve more younger audiences. Concert tours are more personal & promotional; they let the brand occupy more mind space as compared to a festival featuring a wide range of artists. The genres we’re speaking of are all encompassing genres catering to every age group; One might find College Students and CMOs alike, attending these shows. And fittingly this series of concert tours can be titled ‘10’ after Blackberry 10 wherein we can have 10 global artists performing across India’s 10 major cities simultaneously at 10 am/pm and something like this is sure to spark conversations among all 10 cities audiences connected via one platform – Blackberry.

Please name this slide too• • The EDM genre currently dominates the live music space in India;

however, the audiences belonging to this genre are limited in terms of age • • In addition the above idea, the brand can also launch a format specific to

the enterprise space titled the “Enterprise Leadership Forum – The Power of 10” – that’ll be India’s first ever on the go, real – time, silent meeting, wherein at a designated time of the day one industry leader will join a conversation comprising 50-75 participants (Blackberry Owners) who have won a respective in – house corporate contest run by the brand and now have been given an exclusive chance by to gain wisdom from their chosen leader within a timeframe of one hour. There’ll be a panel of 10 leaders that Blackberry will empanel for this forum. The learning’s from this conversation will be collated by these participants and then published by