Blackberry 10 May Not Be Enough To Save The Company

If you have used a Blackberry phone from years back, you known and understand all the great features that it contained. This was the phone used by business and the government for many years for all the security and business features contained in it. And for everything that the company had going for themselves, it seems they took their eye off the ball and did not keep up with all the growing competition. For almost 2 years, the primary focus was on the Blackberry PlayBook at the expense of their extremely popular Blackberry phones. And even the name change from RIM to Blackberry for the company has not changed the direction things are heading.

If you remember back a few years, the Blackberry PlayBook was the first to gain US Government approval for a tablet. Even though consumers where not grabbing the tablet in large numbers, the US Government saw the security values which were built into the product. But that approval was then overshadowed by the loss of sales for US Immigration & Customs Enforcement to the Apple iPhone last year. That was the beginning of a trend. And now, there is a report that the US Department of Defense is moving away from Blackberry devices and towards Apple devices. This further adds to the problems being seen for Blackberry and their future.

And it is not just in the US where the problems are being experienced. Last month, information was revealed that the Canadian Government had issued a warning about the Blackberry communications as not being secure. This involved the Pin to Pin communication and the warning indicated that this was not a secure method of sending a message. And this is coming from the country where Blackberry is based.

The Blackberry 10 OS should have arrived in 2011, but here we are in 2013 with its arrival in an extremely competitive market. Blackberry has allowed for others to take over their place as the leaders in the mobile device world and did not keep up with the needs of consumers. Relying on Government and Corporate sales was not the thing to do and that has caught up with them. With the Blackberry 10, they may now finally be going after the consumer market in a big way. And the addition of running Android apps on Blackberry devices is a great way to greatly expand choices for Blackberry owners.

But the question remains as to whether they can begin to take back market share losses from the past 3 or 4 years. Going from the 20% range in 2009, I have watched them decline into the 1% range. And that is with the addition of Microsoft Windows Phone into the mix and the rising of Samsung as a world leader in mobile devices. Given their current position, future predictions have them taking until 2016 to reach 5% worldwide. That is a very slow growth to continue to remain in the less than 10% group of worldwide devices. With all the other competition, will Blackberry be able to come back?