Market Position of Blackberry

BlackBerry first made headway in the marketplace by concentrating on e-mail. On 25 Seep 2008, RIM announced the number of BlackBerry subscribers has reached approximately 19 million. The success of the brand was because of one core factor and that Is that the company was able to Identify a genuine target customer need In the form of requirement for accessing emails while being on the move. Corporate executives generally have to travel a lot and therefore they value highly the idea of remaining “connected’ at all times.
Blackberry capitalized on this very need and provided a platform to Individuals and corporate to help the executives remain connected. Blackberry’s positioning has always been as an business executive phone. The design of the product, the incorporated feature, marketing communications have also reflected this positioning. This positioning helped the company to carve out a niche for Itself and avoid any direct conflict with any other mobile handset player.
The Changed Scenario Blackberry first with the “Pearl” and now with the “Storm” Is attempting a change In positioning and moving more towards the “Lifestyle segment” space. This can prove counterproductive for the company because it directly places it in competition with Monika , LAG, Samsung and Apple I phone. In fact the storm is being actively compared to models Like NON, LAG Velvet, and Apple Phone. This situation can only work against blackberry and in favor of Apple…. Apple stands for lifestyle blackberry does not.

One may put forward the argument that the offering of similar features (connectivity) along with a host of other value adding features by the other players may have prompted Blackberry to make such a move. But the mistake In such argument is It assumes that Parity In the physical level has nothing to do with parity In cognitive level . The physical always conditions the cognitive, physical cues act as ‘hints’ for the mind to form interpretations or in other words “positions”. I personally believe Blackberry could have done without this strategy of looking slick and feature laden.
There Is plethora of other ways to expand market which the company should have tried before resorting to change in positioning. Http:// brand positioning. Bloodspot. Co. UK/2009/01 ‘blackberry. HTML 1 OFF 1 . Although Blackberry made by RIM Corporation is still used by millions of people in the United States, its usage in nothing compared to other smart-phone that are growing so quickly. Blackberry is now going downward while Apple’s share of mobile traffic is going upward. The reason for this is that phones have some features that blackberry don’t have them.
So, people don’t want blackberry. Instead, they want to have Apple product since Apple keeps innovation and advancement in their product and they fulfill what people ask for. RIMS position in terms of the Porter Model: 2. Threat of entry: the threat of new entrants into the mobile industry is high. For instance, Apple’s entrant into the market is a threat for RIM. Supplier power: the bargaining power of suppliers is low because processors of the name architecture used by RIM are produced by many companies such as Intel, Freestyle and Texas Instruments.