The Decision That Killed BlackBerry

BlackBerry is often remembered as the company that dominated the smartphone market, underestimated the iPhone and then failed to adapt when touchscreens and apps took over. But that version misses why BlackBerry’s position was so difficult to abandon. For years, BlackBerry had been optimized around an enterprise system built on security, centralized control, push email and close relationships with corporate IT departments and mobile carriers. The handset, operating system, messaging infrastructure and enterprise software reinforced one another. And that system worked. Fiscal 2011 was a record year. RIM shipped 52.3 million smartphones and generated nearly $20 billion in revenue. BlackBerry was adding touchscreens, expanding App World and investing in developers while its existing business was still producing extraordinary results. The problem was not simply that BlackBerry failed to see change. The problem was deciding which signals deserved the most weight while the old system was still rewarding the company for protecting it. At the same time, the smartphone was becoming something different. Apple pushed the iPhone into the enterprise while opening the device to outside developers. Applications expanded what a smartphone could do after it had already been sold. Employees increasingly arrived at work with iPhones and Android devices they had already chosen for themselves. The sequence of choice began to reverse. Instead of IT deciding which smartphone employees would use, employees could choose the device first and IT increasingly had to decide whether that device could safely connect to the corporate network. BlackBerry adapted. BlackBerry Mobile Fusion and later BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 could manage BlackBerry, iOS and Android devices. But that adaptation revealed the deeper contradiction. BlackBerry was solving a real customer problem. And the better its device-management software became, the less a customer needed to own a BlackBerry handset. The moat and the product were beginning to separate. This episode of AFTERSHOCK examines BlackBerry, RIM, the iPhone, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, BES 10, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, BYOD, App World, the physical keyboard and the enterprise system that helped make BlackBerry extraordinarily successful — then changed meaning as the smartphone market reorganized around different decision-makers. The fortress had not become worthless. Its walls were simply no longer surrounding the place where the most important choice was being made. BlackBerry did not lose the ability to secure the smartphone first. It lost the power to decide which smartphone needed securing. Music: “Signal to Noise” by Scott Buckley — released under CC-BY 4.0. “Intervention” by Scott Buckley — released under CC-BY 4.0. “Unraveling” by Scott Buckley — released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au