BlackBerry - Research Proposal Example

? ANALYTICAL REPORT - BLACKBERRY goes here] [Your goes here] [Due the paper] Executive Summary Commonly known for manufacturing of mobile phones and tablets, Blackberry is one the world’s most famous telecommunication companies. However, the company is facing huge financial crisis these days due to a significant reduction in the revenue in the recent past. Therefore, there is need for the company to bring some changes to the business strategy and the product line in order to regain its position in today’s competitive market. The purpose of this report was to make some key recommendations for the company to improve its market position, as well as revenue growth. The report included some major problems the company is facing at present. Decreased market share and decreased customer satisfaction level due to comparatively less impressive touch screen design were found to be the main problems for the company for which some key recommendations were given to the officials. The recommendations included development of Blackberry messenger service, manufacturing of music players and laptops, and sharing of the messenger service with competitors. Introduction - Global Overview of Issue Reaching a higher rank in today’s competitive business world and maintaining it for a long time is one of the biggest goals of almost every company belonging to any particular industry. If we talk about the companies belonging to the telecommunication industry, we can say that there is a strong competition among the companies because of ever increasing trend towards use of smart phones and latest wireless devices. In such a scenario, companies need to deliver attractive and innovative products to the customer not only to achieve competitive advantage but also to increase the customer base. However, doing all this is not an easy job and requires extensive thinking. Blackberry is one of such companies which are currently facing huge financial crisis because of decreased customer satisfaction with their current product range. The company was considered one of the top smart phone brands of the world in the recent past because of its innovative products and high quality. However, it is becoming a challenge for the company to maintain its position in the world of wireless technologies because it is not coming up with the designs and features for its new products that customer usually look for. It is due to this reason that the company has not only lost a significant percentage of its market share recently but also lost many of its customers. The company will also lay off almost 4,500 employees in the nearest future (Goldman, 2013). This analytical report is designed to present an in-depth overview of the problem being faced by the company, as well as the reasons behind the problems. The main purpose of the report is to provide some recommendations to the company’s officials regarding solutions for the identified problems. Company Background Founded in 1984 by Mike Lazaridis, Blackberry is a Canadian telecommunication company that manufactures tablets and smart phones. The company has remained the market leader of the world of telecommunication devices for a long time based on its high quality mobile phones and wireless devices. However, with the advent of new technologies and design concepts in the field of information technology and successful adoption of those concepts by the competing firms, the market share of the company has fallen drastically. It is true that Blackberry had a great hold on the telecommunication industry a few years back when designers and software engineers of the company were coming up with eye-catching mobile phone designs, as well as the software applications for the phones. However, the company could not carry on with the pace and eventually left itself behind in the race of competition. The major reasons behind this fall are lack of focus towards adopting new design concepts, lack of focus towards adopting new operating systems, such as, android, and lack of focus towards developing customer-oriented business strategies. Technology is one of the main drivers of success for all firms related to the field of telecommunication and wireless devices. Today, only those firms can achieve success that have a good knowledge of customers’ interests and that build their designs in accordance with the design needs of customers. For example, Samsung, Apple, and Sony are the three companies that base their design concepts considering the trend and fashion. This is the reason why these companies has achieved considerable success in the recent past and are still on the top ranks in the world of telecommunication and wireless devices. On the other hand, Blackberry still relies on the old-fashioned design which no longer matches the interests of consumers, particularly the young community all over the world. Similarly, the company has not yet adopted the use of android operating system which is the most demanded operating system today for mobile phones. Moreover, the company’s new design for touch screen mobiles is also unable to draw the attention of mobile phone customers. Looking at these problems, it seems obvious that the company needs to bring some considerable changes in the business strategy, product line, and design of the products in order to regain its market position. Description and Analysis of Options To overcome the issues of decreased market share and reduced customer base, Blackberry needs to take some serious steps. Let us describe some feasible options one by one in detail in order to have a clear understanding of how these options can help the company achieve a dominant position in the market. Development and Improvement of Blackberry Messenger Service The first option to resolve the problem of decreased market share is to develop and improve the messenger service of the company. Blackberry can do this by including some new features in the messenger service. For example, the company should provide users the facility of sending songs to each other using messenger service. Similarly, they should provide the facility of sending images to other users in a less amount of time. Moreover, users should be able to send files and documents to each other using instant messenger service. Blackberry needs to provide these services as the initial step towards change. These should not be the only steps in any case because other messenger services, such as, Viber and Line messenger are also offering similar services to android users. Therefore, in order to keep the position of Blackberry messenger service ahead of such competitors, the company should use continuous improvement to come up with some more innovative features to attract customers. Continuous improvement always results in increasing the market share and growth potential (Jones, 2008). Along with adding new features to the messenger service, the company should also add some more functions to the existing line of Blackberry functions in order to draw the attention of mobile phone users. For example, enhanced information security mechanisms, innovative and technical touch screen technology, and improved body design can become the success factors for Blackberry. Manufacturing of Laptops and Music Players Another option for the company to resolve its current problems is to start manufacturing laptop and music players as some new additions to the existing product line. Today, laptop has become a need of almost every student, professional, and businessperson. Looking at increasing use of laptops in all fields of life, the company can definitely make a good use of this opportunity to make a name in the field of computer technology. The company can manufacture stylish and high quality laptops to draw the attention of laptop users. Similarly, the company should start manufacturing other devices, such as, music players and playbooks to increase the number of customers which will eventually increase the company’s revenue. Moreover, Cultrona (n.d.) states that blackberry users often find it difficult to streaming music and play videos from the internet. Looking at this statement, we can say that the company should improve its processing efficiency which is not up to the mark at present. Sharing the Messenger Service with Competitors Currently, Blackberry owns a messenger that lets its users do instant chat with other Blackberry users. They can send messages to each other without any charges. Similarly, they can check each other’s online, busy, or available status. However, they cannot send messages to the users of other mobile phone companies which is the biggest disadvantage that the company needs to improve in order to fulfill the needs of the modern-day customers. As Dannenfeldt (n.d.) states, “the biggest disadvantage of BlackBerry Messenger may be that it only allows you to exchange instant messages with other BlackBerry users” (p. 1). Gone are the days when instant messaging service was an innovative concept and when consumers only had the choice to buy a Blackberry mobile phone for this purpose. Today, android offers such software applications that can be installed on any android based mobile phone and the users of all types of android phones can send instant messages to each other without any charges. Blackberry needs to extend its messenger use to other mobile phone companies in order to get some percentage of its customers back because customers of the present world only opt for buying such products which can offer them a large amount of features and functions. They do not opt for the product of a company which restricts them in doing something that other mobile phone companies let them do. Blackberry can share its current messenger service with its competitors on the basis of some percentage of use. For example, the company can fix some percentage on the profit that mobile phone companies get through providing the instant messaging service to the customers. The company can do this until the software engineers of the company come up with some new features in the messenger service that should be able to draw the attention of consumers all over the world. Conclusion and Recommendation Summing it up, Blackberry has remained one of the top cellular brands of the world. However, the company is facing financial instability these days due to decreased market share and customer base. It is becoming very difficult for the company to sustain its position in the world of cellular technology and wireless devices because the company is not meeting the expectations of the customers through its current product line and designs. Therefore, the company needs to bring some key changes in the business strategy, as well as in product design to regain its market share. To resolve the problems of decreased customer base and market share, the three recommendations for the company discussed earlier in the report include: Development and improvement of Blackberry Messenger service The company needs to bring some major changes or improvement in the current messenger service in order to make it more attractive for customers. Some of the main improvements can be provision of facilities, such as, exchange of songs, exchange of files and documents, and instant chat facility with the users of other mobile phone users. Manufacturing of tablets, music players, and laptops The company needs to add some more products to its current product line, such as, laptops and playbooks to increase the customer base, as well as the revenue. An addition to the product line through high quality products can definitely add more value to the company in terms of increased number of customers and market share. Sharing of current Blackberry Messenger Service with competitors The company should also share its current messenger service with the competitors in order to earn some profit on percentage basis until the software engineers of the company come up with some unique and attractive messenger features. Change in the software process improvements only come through experience-based approach (Moitra, 1998, p. 199). Therefore, the company should use experienced software engineering professionals to bring necessary software changes in the Blackberry messenger service. References Cultrona, R. (n.d.). Advantages & Disadvantages of Using a BlackBerry. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/list_6130014_advantages-_amp_-disadvantages-using-blackberry.html Dannenfeldt, D. (n.d.). How BlackBerry Messenger Works. Retrieved from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/e-mail-messaging/blackberry-messenger1.htm Goldman, D. (2013). Oops! BlackBerry even worse off than it thought. CNN Money. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/02/technology/enterprise/blackberry/ Jones, R. (2008). Proving Continuous Improvement with Profit Ability. Milwaukee: Quality Press. Moitra, D. (1998). Managing change for software process improvement initiatives: a practical experience-based approach. Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 4(4), 199-207. Read More