According to reports from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech that were recently released, BlackBerry market share has taken a huge turn for the worst in recent months. Following the strategic sale and potential buyout, BlackBerry has been turning heads, and now, many are seeing that it is for all the wrong reasons. Shortly following the firing of CEO Thorsten Heins and an executive upheaval, Kantar released a report showing that in major markets across the world, BlackBerry has an almost non-existent market share. According to the new data, Kantar shows that BlackBerry has a slew of declines across the board. The image, provided below from the Kantar Worldpanel report, is insight that demonstrates that the uphill climb for BlackBerry is still very much in progress.
As seen above – the US, EU5 (Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain), and China have all experienced losses in market share and gains for almost every other platform overall. What we may be seeing is a fall off from the legacy platform that has been a residual calculation from months past. This does to an extent imply the weakness of BlackBerry 10, however it does not demonstrate outright that BlackBerry 10 was a failure; it may explain that it’s exposure compared to other smartphones in the market, has been relatively weak. Well not quite relatively weak…abysmally weak.
Does this spell the end for BlackBerry, as a renewal in strategy in “going back to our roots” by focusing on the Enterprise customer may end up being the last attempt at a resurrection in the marketplace? Maybe not. In fact, this strategy seems to have worked for them in Australia, as that is the only country in which BlackBerry has proliferated in the past few months. The Enterprise approach may be the only relevant space for BlackBerry in the present, however, it does not spell the end for them if it isn’t.
They have several avenues to explore and coupled with a breath of new life from a new CEO and company structure – along with an injection of $1B in cash from Fairfax Financial Holdings. What may happen if this approach fails is another attempt at a strategic sale, partnership, or dissolution of the company as it stands. If BlackBerry cannot come up with a more sustainable approach toward gaining an actively growing customer base, then they may not be cut out for the world of technology as we know and love them.