Introduction
The disparities and dynamism existing in the current technologic advances have initiated complex reproaches in marketing technics. One company that has experienced adverse changes and challenges is Research in Motion Limited (RIM). It is a company that trades as Blackberry in Canada.
This does not imply that the company pays particulate attention to Canada alone. Instead, the company exploits the market throughout the globe to diversify and populate its products. RIM (trading as Blackberry) was found by Mike Lazardis in 1984. In 1984, the advances and dispersions of technology were inferior to the present computational progress. It is, therefore, apparent that Blackberry faced copious adjustment to fit into the complemented markets.
Complementation implies that there were new and advanced products introduced to compete with Blackberry. An analysis is vital to determine the aspects characterizing such companies. Apparently, I will provide a report analyzing these aspects and evaluating whether Blackberry could overcome its current standing in the market. Consequently, the essay will evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that surround Blackberry Company alongside strategies of solving issues.
Swot Analysis
Strengths
Reputation is a key strength that blackberry has initiated by introducing secure devices. The products produced by Blackberry were competitive and satisfying to the customers. Satisfaction is a fundamental attribute that allows customers to gain interests about products and services. Blackberry Pearl 8100 was a quality and secure phone that attracted consumers worldwide.
The product retained a sense of quality in relation to the earlier products. Therefore, the company became advanced and qualified to receive customer loyalty for subsequent devices. Additionally, competition was rare to the company because there were few companies providing similar products. Consumers did not have the chances to compare Blackberry products with other devices. This allowed people to perceive a sense of reputation and quality.
The brand created a substantial loyal number of customers from business contractors and corporates. The loyalty prevented some customers from using other brands. In 1st December 2012, a rise of blackberry users had risen to seventy nine million.
This rise was attributed to the customers’ loyalty that facilitated information dispersion amongst close individuals. According to Hooley (2008), customer satisfaction allows dispersion of positive attributes of a commodity. Hooley’s stipulation proves intricate in blackberry advances and success.
Another unexceptional aspect involves the level of brand recognition. There was a quality perception and high cost that allowed the recognition of blackberry devices. In fact, it is apparent that RIM limited has changed the trade name due to the high recognition of the blackberry devices. They identified that the brand name had dispersed more widely than the company’s name. Consequently, the company trades its products as Blackberry today.
Blackberry has been an award winning company. This attribute has made significant contributions in strengthening the company. It has proved to be worthwhile and competitive from these award. Chaston (2009) identified that leading companies attain high customer rating and credible feedbacks. Additionally, winning provides a perspective that facilitates Blackberry selection by customers when deciding about the best devices.
Weaknesses
However, there are other factors that weaken the potentials of Blackberry success. It has been identified that the company lost loyalty from non-corporate customers. This arose due to the intriguing characteristic of the devices in comparison to Apple iPhone and Google Android. These products brought a huge gap that deprived the populating qualities of blackberry. For instance, these devices could accommodate many applications and multitask.
Additionally, the products had a lower price than the closest blackberry that was present. The new product gained access to the market and deteriorated the initial achievements of RIM. In fact, the company had enjoyed an uncompetitive market. Therefore, it did not initiate new strategies to prevent loss of market. This allowed the companies to investigate and determine the ways of killing blackberry in the market.
Apple iPhone was termed as the blackberry killer because it managed to provide better and quality devices that were incomparable to blackberry devices. The cost and requirement for blackberry created a perception that the devices were made for professionals. Affordability was, therefore, a great hit on the success of blackberry. It was vital to allow customers understand that blackberry was universal and easy for all people to operate.
Also, the cost should have been regulated for the target market to afford the product and spread information about its incredible features. The dependency of RIM on the government and corporation participates in weakening the company. For instance, if several corporations withdrew from a contract, the remedies would be huge losses due to capital or profits expected from the contract. The techniques applied by the risen companies were substantive and independent.
Apple iPhone was not only marketed through corporation contracts, but also through individual consignments. Therefore, their prices were not modified to retrieve profits for third party contractors. Research and development of blackberry was bounded by restriction of part by part innovative product release. Products were released to satisfy an aspect that customers requested improvement.
Otherwise, the company could not introduce all advances together without studying customers’ behaviors and attitudes. The target was to produce new devices with high features from a product released initially from the company. RIM expected that customers would value the arising products in relation to the inferior products produced initially. However, they did not pay attention to the freeness of marketing and market entry.
This implies that there were no strategies initiated to make policies about innovation releases to the market. This, therefore, aroused a significant weakness to the company. Also, leadership and losses influenced the performances of the company. The company lost income when customers shifted to alternative smartphones. This led to suspension of employee that facilitated covering of losses experienced. It triggered subsequent losing events that lowered production and income squarely.
Opportunities
Opportunities available for blackberry exploitation are substantive. Growth of information technology involving the use of social media, study sites, online books, and mass media among others have participated in creating opportunities for mobile devices (Evans, 2012). These developments have motivated many people into buying the devices produced by Blackberry Company.
Many app markets have been developed to facilitate the introduction and uses of blackberry devices. These are exemplified by Google play store and android market. Consequently, there is an increase of product sales arising from the substantial facilitation of mobile devices globally.
IT advances create credible grounds for opportunities because people are enlightened about the use of mobile devices. Concurrently, there is a significant expansion of the target market for these devices. Additionally, the government has increased demand for these devices. Developing countries forms credible sites where market for blackberry can be initiated.
This would allow RIM to form the marketing bases and create trust from customers. The blackberry 10 contains unique features that cannot be seen in other smart phones. In addition, the device incorporated a touch screen and a keyboard. It is, therefore, apparent that individuals could prefer the phone for its advanced complementation and broadened appeal. Rising in an environment without adverse competition was an integral attribute to facilitate development.
Threats
Growth of technology has brought about some factors that threaten Blackberry in the market. First, competition from a rising market of devices, especially smartphones, has reduced the loyalty of customers to Blackberry. This comes with critical price adjustments and advertisement costs to facilitate continued company recognition in the market.
Other initiatives arose to encourage inventions of the devices in a free manner. Consequently, the forces that could prevent free entry to the market are no longer present. Additionally, it is vital to realize that the company had failed to create a solid customer base. It was, therefore, prone to prior changes and lack of stabilization after the first company introduced competition.
The chances provided to the company by the government will be opening for other companies starting from 2014. Consequently, it is possible that Blackberry will lose contractors to other companies. This was a major income sector for the company. Its deterioration and loss will pose intolerable challenges to the market. These will include less profits that cannot sustain the workforce of the company. The stipulation of Chao (2007) alleged that unsustainability of business progress leads to strategic losing events.
For instance, less income could lead to suction of some worker. The workforce reduction leads to reduction of production rates and inactivity. Chao described that the processes lead total failure of a business. However, Leiw (2009) noted that strategic management of employees could prevent this disintegration. For instance, salaries could be reduced to fit all workers. Therefore, there would be no workforce reduction arising due to firing or suspensions. The leadership of RIM posed a threat to the success of Blackberry Company.
This company was not successful on finding App manufacturers. This became a source of threat because few companies had not managed to secure applications manufacturer. Native applications would have specialized the uses and features of blackberry. Additionally, they would have made the use of blackberry selective and unique. The users would have attained integration of using blackberry to prevent changes and allow loyalty. The company leaders alleged that carriers refuted sale on Z10 phone model.
Therefore, this phone referred to as blackberry sprint was not marketed appropriately. Lawsuits have inconvenienced the progresses of blackberry by incurring charges and fines to the company. Consequently, lawsuit is another threat that blackberry must consider during its business activities. An instance of these Blackberry loses includes the payment of eight dollars for every device sold through infringing technology in the United States. The payment totaled to one hundred and forty seven million dollars.
Overcoming Current Market Challenges
The market of blackberry is depreciating everyday due to the rising companies to compete. The founder of Blackberry Company reassigned recently (28th March 2013) for unspecified reasons. The loyalty that had dispersed throughout the globe about blackberry is no longer significant. The workforce have been reduced to a sustainable level.
This implies that less people will be involved in marketing their products throughout the globe. Shares reduced due to the lowering and risky investments. In fact, the shares had reduced to lower than fourteen dollars. This is a lower value when compared to share of above one hundred and forty dollar in the year 2008. These fluctuations led to market depreciation and high product prices.
Strategic analysis depicts that Blackberry Company does not compete well with others companies. The complaints made concerned the rigidity of the company and its aspects of detecting changes in the market. For instance, blackberry is slow in covering threats posed by other companies. Probably, direct and convincing strategies should be initiated to respond fast to these aspects.
Competition regarding the introduction of Apple iPhone and Google Android was treacherous on the marketing strategies of blackberry. Since these launches were commenced, the company did not compliment the market by providing alternate products. There ought to be strategies arousing the competition growth. For instance, RIM should have launched competitive smartphones one month after iPhones were introduced. Software services require advanced and abrupt updating to the features that bold users require.
Strategic launching of products to facilitate information dissemination throughout the globe could be vital. Marketing is an attribute that competitors consider squarely because it is a key factor in attracting customers. Complaints have been made that RIM continuously ships products late than other companies. In some instances, the products are incomplete and inferior to the competing devices.
Probably, fast and efficient execution of products could solve the issues relating to these complaints. Studying the market would be vital to determine the best devices that would exceed the features presented by other companies. Investors are compliment facilitators of the market. Failure to address issues raised by the investors have initiated loss of investments from the company.
RIM have not managed to provide reliable product guidance requested by investors. It is apparent that the governance of RIM does not take active roles in making organizational decisions. Most companies meet and discuss issues relating to the success of their products. When RIM exempts this part, the resultant attributes are loss of customers and poor marketing strategies. This, in turn, leads to failure due to lack of strategic attributes.
There is a reduced rate of advertisements for RIM’s products. RIM must consider all marketing strategies vital in its sales. Otherwise, the complimenting products will be recognized more than its products. This implies that people will be more conversant with other devices than blackberry. However, the company have initiated strategies to facilitate product preferences.
For instance, some blackberry users can access internet without paying directly to their servers. Consequently, customers would like to enjoy this unique character. Initiations of other products are blocking the desires to operate blackberry devices. The adaptation of blackberry into the market is being mitigated slowly. Probably, if Blackberry does not curb this influence, the disparity will be huge and untreatable. Other companies will have dominated the market to prevent minor innovators from expanding.
Acceptance of mobile apps that are not unique to blackberry would solve issue exhibited by application inventors. This is because the markets of mobile apps are raising exponentially in time.
Changes of the initial phone model into simplistic models would convenience customers. For instance, the devices could be made lighter, smaller and more compact than the prevailing models to facilitate customer satisfaction. This could be retrieved by studying the competing products, their capabilities, advantages and disadvantages. Satisfying products would be introduced when the complimenting companies have not addressed the problematic issues.
Finally, the outstanding aspect of blackberry regarding the GPS security services should be applied hugely. This is because many people recognize this service. Phones theft cases cannot apply to GPS enabled mobile devices. Therefore, due to the rising issues of theft, customers are in dire need to secure their devices with a promising company.
Conclusion
The developments made through information technology are beyond reproach. Furthermore, the developments are integrating on daily basis towards high levels of establishment and service provision. Ideally, there are no limits that could be described in relation to these developments. Consumers cannot tell what will be innovated tomorrow. It is, therefore, apparent that IT developments are substantially indeterminate.
Does developments in IT rely on chances? Are there targets that innovators aim to achieve? Are they close to achieving them? There are copious questions that have not been answered up to today. The developments are arousing sequential questions. However, the point remains that we are going to wait for the next innovation. Probably, the innovation will set the highest achievable developments in information and computer technology.
Hopefully, blackberry will establish its initial bases and the level of organization prospects to compete and make this utmost innovation. However, making this innovation requires it to address the issues discussed in the previous topic. Otherwise, the company might remain grounded by other competing companies. Retrieval of the initial integrity and motivational ideas are potential stands in arousing the prosperity and advancement of Research in Motion.
References
Chao, S. (2007). Advancing quality improvement research: challenges, opportunities-workshop summary. Washington: National Academies Press.
Chaston, I. (2009). New Marketing Strategies: Evolving Flexible Processes to Fit Market Circumstance. London: Sage Publications.
Evans, D. (2012). Social media marketing an hour a day. Indianapolis: Wiley.
Hooley, G. (2008). Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall.
Liew, J. (2009). Employee training: a study of education and training department in various corporations. Sydney: General Books.