Vitaly Demin Senior Strategy Consultant Read about Vitaly

SHARE

August 2010

For a very long time blackberry has been a world leader in smart phone sales until iPhone and Android devices dethroned R.I.M. in the last couple of years. You would figure that the Blackberry maker employs the best strategy executives in the industry but it may not be true. There were certain mistakes along the way that R.I.M. made that put the company where it is today.

A lot of what's happening is based on arrogance and unwillingness to change and invest in change. As iPhone and Android devices completely moved to a full size screen strategy, R.I.M. persisted with their classic half screen half physical keyboard form factor. On one hand they were probably preserving their signature design which is recognizable by anyone in the world but on the other not recognizing (or unwillingness to recognize) a fast pace of design in mobile technology and a necessity to change is much worse. If you look at the Blackberry smartphone product line there are only two devices out of I don't know how many have full size screens.

Another strategic mistake of RIM is failure to upgrade their rather obsolete operating system and especially browsing. The new OS 6 that came out recently sports various features like social media integration and others but one of the most essential ones like the browser was not improved at all. Browsing the Internet on a Blackberry is so bad that sometimes it's not even worth the effort. Today, when smart phones become like personal computers more and more, not having a decent browser experience is a deal breaker for over 50% of customers. iPhone and Android browsers especially on the newest high resolution screens offer an incredible quality of viewing almost any website while Blackberry is failing left and right. Obviously this has a lot to do with customer loyalty reports that came out recently. While iPhone and Android customers reported 89% and 72% loyalty figures, only 42% of Blackberry users said they would purchase another Blackberry (Nielsen).

The mentioned above wide range of Blackberry devices puts a lot of pressure on their inventory management. Blackberry probably has more models than Android based smartphones made by several manufacturers. This creates problems with obsolete inventory and results in profit erosion while at the same time being really confusing for customers.

The major problem for R.I.M. is that it's failing on both hardware and software levels. While Apple excels in both and Android enjoys the diversity of hardware choices, it will be extremely hard for Blackberry to improve their situation. The unwillingness to admit the inferior customer experience compared to their competitors resulted in such low loyalty figures and apparently decreasing sales growth rate.

As more iPhones being sold by the day and as the increasing number of Android models delivered by various manufacturers meet almost every need that iPhone doesn't, R.I.M. may soon find themselves at a (P)lace they don't want to be.

This eBook is a brief insight into the core of the executive management of Sony Corporation, the core that is unfortunately filled with one of the most perilous human qualities – arrogance.

For a very long time now Sony has been known as an organization permeated by arrogant attitude toward their suppliers, their distributors and now their customers. This culture is felt everywhere in the world. I remember having meetings with Sony people in Moscow Russia when I consulted the largest electronics retailer in the country. These meetings were very adversarial and not a most pleasant experience. Also, as I worked with electronics retailers in Kuwait, Emirates, India, England, US and other countries, the opinions I received about Sony were the same. Nobody liked them and nobody wanted to do business with them because it was just too painful. Obviously, they could not stop carrying Sony products in their stores but some of them did try to reduce the assortment. Sony rarely partners. They dictate.

This work is an attempt to show how corporate arrogance affected the decisions Sony made along the way, the decisions that led to mistakes, mistakes that got them dethroned from the position of being the best and the most admired consumer electronics company in the world.

I hope this eBook helps other companies see a bigger picture of how decisions that are made inside their organizations affect their brand, their customer loyalty and profitable business growth. Very often top managers do not realize that many of wrong decisions are made not due to the lack of knowledge about the problem but due to the mentioned above human flaw – arrogance.

The 2nd edition includes financial updates from 2010 as well as other recent events associated with the Sony organization.

Al Ries, one of the world's top marketing strategists today, wrote in his best-selling book "Positioning" back in 1981 that the purpose of advertising is to support the position of... Read more...

In October 2010 Microsoft released its new generation mobile operating system called Windows Phone. They were just another player in the game after Apple iPhone with iOS and Google... Read more...

I knew that the Kirkland Signature brand was being stretched beyond possible but I never really thought how bad it was till recently. I was at a Costco store the other day and I bought... Read more...

Earlier this month I wrote an article about how brand mismanagement is killing a very strong smartphone brand - Droid. Stretched among three smartphone makers (Motorola, HTC... Read more...

This brief take on the Nokia situation is not about the numbers. The latest numbers are here. The point of this article is below... Read more...

Earlier this year I published an article that talked about how phone manufacturers were losing their brand power by producing too many different phone models. Looks like the situation... Read more...

Earlier this year I consulted a large national company. I worked directly with several Vice Presidents. One day I ran into one of the executives in the hallway (let’s call this person Mark) and asked him... Read more...

If you look back about a year and a half and watch some of the TV ads that Verizon Wireless has had during this period of time, it’s impossible not to see that their brand has been steadily moving... Read more...

What started happening 2-3 years ago in the mobile phone industry absolutely redefined the entire game. iPhone and Android were the ones who changed it. The two questions here are: do... Read more...

Microsoft has for a long time now been labeled as a company that lacks innovation for not making many attempts to move into the future, specifically mobile. After being on top of the... Read more...

For a very long time blackberry has been a world leader in smart phone sales until iPhone and Android devices dethroned R.I.M. in the last couple of years. You would figure that the... Read more...

As a lot of companies today are outsourcing their websites to other organizations around the world, the time has come to rethink the strategy and the plan for the future. The world has never... Read more...

Apple has never allowed sex and porn content apps into their AppStore. Many people have criticized them for that but there is a deep strategy logic in the world’s best marketing machine making... Read more...

Recently AT&T launched a marketing campaign involving a change of their slogan to "Rethink Possible." The question right there is "How do you expect to connect to your audience with... Read more...