A Survival Plan for Blackberry
There’ll be business school cases written about the rise and fall of BlackBerry, not to mention its latest feat of losing almost a billion dollars in three months so it could fill warehouses with stacks of unsold smartphones that looked like iPhones and Galaxies. With various potential buyers contemplating whether to take the company private or sell off the pieces, BlackBerry ran an open letter a few weeks ago to reassure its customers of its “best-in-class” value in productivity, security and social networks.
No need to wait for the book to deconstruct that last bit. It’s scary dumb. The world doesn’t need half the smartphones currently on the market, companies are getting linked into larger hardware and software zaibatsu, and all phones will get obliterated once Google, Samsung and Apple figure out how to turn them into glasses, wristwatches and fashionable raincoats.
