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Showing posts with label research in motion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research in motion. Show all posts
Blackberry (or Crackberry as it was known), I've been keeping an eye on and blogged about before. In July 2012 I thought they were in a death spiral then and this might give you background - http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2012/07/blackberry-death-spiral-possible-end.html. The appointment of Alicia Keys as Global Creative Director was, well, a WTF moment - http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2013/01/a-wtf-moment-blackberry-10-launches-and.html The smartphone and playbook maker has been struggling for some time.... although poor results have been balanced with an optimism that things well get better. Well they haven't. Today the share is tanking -25% on foot of results from the last quarter and optimism has waned - to say the least. Thorsten Heins the CEO isn't exactly Steve Jobs and I'm not sure anyway, that he's inspiring. Poor English under an accent is never good in the old communication stakes and a more polished spokesperson might have been a better idea.
They lost 84m dollars in Q1 and predicted more losses in Q2 expected. They have also scrapped plans to update their Playbook, an indication that they've given up the ghost on that too. And subscriber numbers were not disclosed either (although rumour has it, they're down by 4 million). Although it has to be said, their Revenue was up +15% and their accumulated cash improved. Blackberry have put their future on their BB10/Z10 smartphone which was late to the market and these results are the first full quarter where the device has been available. They shipped (which is different to "sold") 6.8m smartphones in the quarter which compares with Apple's 37million nevermind Samsung's 60 million-ish. The critical issue here is that these results have disappointed in that they show no sign of a hoped-for turnaround. Blackberry was once a dominant brand in smartphones and simply it has been overtaken by innovation of the Iphone and Samsung and others. Leadership of the company was focused on cost-cutting rather than building better brands and are now paying a price. With market chatter today negatively and the corresponding collapse in share price, will make this a really difficult period for them. Really difficult. Early share price rallies have been wiped out and more at issue has been the wipe-out of confidence. Survival is now the watchword for the once great brand.
Research-in-Motion, the Canadian Company that owns 'Blackberry', are in another 'make or break' launch today of the Blackberry 10.
It's a company that doesn't stay out of the news and were sharply criticised earlier in the year for this very launch being post the Christmas sales time. In other words, they were missing the boat of high phone sales. The CEO is Thorsten Heins, who bears the brunt of most of the PR having taken over under a promise of total revitalisation which just hasn't happened. Yet. Probably because he has the personality of a chair. So big drum roll for the big launch today. And then lo and behold, they actually trump their own phone publicity by announcing a new Global Creative Director for the company - Alicia Keys. Yep, the same Alicia Keys. You know, "Fallin'" ("in and out, of love, with you"). Now you're wondering (I can sense it) what exactly would Alicia Keys know about phones? We all are really - but the reason is clear, she says, because "I've always wanted to work with a technology company". Oh, oookkkkaaaaayyyy, I get it now. Previously she was quoted as saying she was an "Iphone junkie" though? But she tweeted to clear that up by saying she was delighted to be with Blackberry now ("we're dating" she said, on the launch video above). She'll be doing the national anthem at The Superbowl on Sunday, presumably with her Blackberry. By the way, Blackberry have bought the 1st Superbowl Ad up this weekend. I'm going to hazard a guess here.....it's Alicia Keys singing about The Blackberry 10. Betcha. But all the PR is about her and not The Blackberry 10 as a consequence of this move. The good old Washington Post reported that a possible PR alternative was to change the company name instead to 'Research in stagnation' and wonder, like me, what the hell is a 'Global Creative Director' anyway? And suggested that they had thought Blackberry was moving away from the keyboard? Those kind of comments. Techcrunch did a whole piece about what she was wearing and a "What the?" byline saying "What Alicia Keys? The singer Alicia Keys?" incredulity. One Techcrunch commentator wondered if he was reading the satirical, The Onion! Celebrity endorsement does make sense for sure. However, doing it at a launch of the new phone is, well, PR suicide. It's the celebs who get the mention not the phone. I don't know anymore. I must just be getting too old for this game and not down with the kids anymore. I mean I'd never have thought of appointing Alicia Keys as the Global Creative Director of a phone. Not in a million years.
Why does every Tech CEO want to do the Steve Jobs style of presentation even when it doesn't suit? Thorsten Heins above, CEO of Blackberry, thinks taking off his tie and wandering around the stage, clapping, is eh, jobs-esque. "Have a great Blackberry world", he says "And let's rock and roll this". Really. Sometimes you're just better off just being you. It's 35 minutes long but you get a sense of Thorsten after 5 minutes.
And if you haven't seen Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer, another man under real pressure, go to the other extreme, do it. http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2012/07/vanity-fair-august-article-to-add-to.html Honestly it's cringe worthy.
But I'll save you the trouble...what the?
Thorsten presides over continued troubles this week at 'Research in Motion' the Canadian public quoted company parent of The 'Blackberry'. A company which a lot of Canadians held up as a "national treasure" because it was the inventor of "mobile mail".
And it's the story of how a one-time market dominant player is struggling.
You have to see parallels between Blackberry and Nokia. Old world dominant brands who have lost their value because they didn't keep up. Online bloggers now are referring to it as 'The Blackberry death spiral'.
The first Blackberry (named by Lexicon branding by the way) appeared in 1999 as a two-way pager in Germany. Today, it retains about 3% (a massive drop from 9% in a year) of the smartphone market competing with Android, Windows and iphones where it has really struggled. Whilst, at the same time, Samsung, Apple and HTC have boomed.
With over 70 million subscribers, the Caribbean and Latin America (yep, you know that) have the highest penetration of Blackberrys.
Although considered as "more secure" as an email sender, it's widely known in the US as "The Crackberry" which indicates its high usage amongst drug dealers because of that security. It was famously used in the London riots by thugs. However another well known "user" is Barrack Obama whom during his 2008 Presidential campaign became dependent on it and it acted almost as a celeb 'endorsement'. Which should have done a great marketing job for Blackberry, but didn't.
The problem is sales.
Up to March 2012, they shipped 11 million Blackberrys which was down 21% on the previous quarter. In its fourth quarter it announced a loss of 125 million usd and plans to save 1 billion usd this year by cutting up to 6,000 jobs out of its staff of 17,000.
Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock and shares have hit an all time low this week, down 94% off their peak value. That's 94%. Which is why its investors are not happy - not one tiny bit - and they're saying it loudly. Employees too are writing letters and posting about how unhappy they are with the company direction.
New CEO German Thorsten Heins (ex Siemens) who took over in January, promised investors he'd transform Blackberry into a "lean mean hunting machine" (I wonder did he mean "fighting machine" and it got lost in translation?) and used real rallying cries of corporate pride. The share price fell a further 5% as he spoke.
As the "new" CEO he says a lot - "Blackberry will be in the top 3 smartphone producers, soon" - but it should be remembered that he's actually been with the company since 2007.
"I have assembled a leadership
team for RIM that's truly capable of taking us into future," he told shareholders but at the same time, pushed back the launch of Blackberry 10 until next year, missing out on the holiday sales at the end of this year. This will allow his competitors to further extend their lead on Blackberry and of course, they'll have to suffer the launch of iphone 5 which might take more Blackberry customers.
Seemingly Thorsten felt that they'd rather postpone their launch until they got the new Blackberry "right". Quality before Speed. Hmmmm, great if you have the time luxury to do that - which this company just doesn't.
Apart from what is considered his "poor" communication skills (one reason perhaps is because he's hard to understand - never a good start in the old communication stakes) and the company's poor R&D (no touchscreen for example), he has an inability to convince staff to remain with the troubled company.
On Wednesday the head of the Australian/New Zealand operations stepped down only months after he was given the job in April. The head of the business in India left in November and a steady stream of senior staff have left too including its head of legal, head of global sales, a CEO and head of software.
It's really extraordinary that Blackberry can't plough on with a base of over 70 million loyal subscribers (they have to be loyal at this stage). But it's become an old world, Nasdaq quoted, middle aged corporate with no right to be involved in the new space. A lot of companies are going to go this way in a lot of sectors.
But perhaps I'm being unfair - maybe they will do it - a lot of people don't think so though.
Think what happened to video stores when Netflix came along and ask yourself, how did they let that happen? Think about major book chains who let ebooks get past them. Think about how mobile carriers (I know this is heresy but it will happen) are going to be decimated by Skype/voip? Think about traditional TV/Press broadcasting compared to online publishers? And it goes on and on.
The Web is the great brand leveller.
Funny really that no one in Blackberry even had the commonsense to see an irony as to where they had chosen to have this weeks investor meeting in Canada.
