With the DTEK50, BlackBerry has just one chance to right itself before its self-imposed profit deadline. Could the company have effectively doomed itself?
Irony is a cruel thing. Earlier this year, I wrote on three key objectives through which BlackBerry could save itself. With the DTEK50, its newest Android phone, the company has fulfilled one of the objectives I elucidated on – but in doing so, the firm could have sentenced itself to death once and for all.
It’s very easy to predict the death of a company, particularly one as fragile as BlackBerry. Time and time again, we’ve predicted what could be the ailing Canadian company’s last move only for it to recompose itself and struggle one small step further.
Read: BlackBerry unveils its second Android smartphone
We first thought the end was nigh when BlackBerry formally distanced itself from BlackBerry 10, and again we reckoned that its Android hopeful – the Priv – wouldn’t be enough to save the company from itself.
We found a glimmer of hope in the fact that the company was rumoured to be working on three new Android devices – a strategy closely in line with what I predicted could buoy the company for at least a little while longer.
Now that the first of that trinity – comprised of devices codenamed Neon, Argon and Mercury – has been announced, I can’t help but feel a death knell swiftly approaches.
Endgame
BlackBerry’s CEO, John Chen, has been bullish with his optimism that the company can survive, and has, in equal terms, been strict. Chen has established a goal that – should the company’s hardware division not be profitable come September – it will exit the smartphone business altogether.
It’s nearly August.
This is the way the world ends
The DTEK50 feels more akin to a whimper than a bang for many reasons; one of them is evident right from its name.
BlackBerry has a history of creating better codenames than product names. Perhaps the most memorable device was the Passport – a name that instantly stuck no matter how much you despised its square form factor.
The Priv bears an unfortunate name, but was given the poetic codename of Venice. While that shares connotations with sinking into the ground, the DTEK50 bore the internal name ‘Vienna’.
Why couldn’t BlackBerry have stuck with that?
That sinking feeling
The answer is quite simple; the company is already hedging its bets that its hardware business will fail, and that its software business will survive. The company still retains BBM under its banners, and is actively working to reposition itself as the solution to one of Android’s biggest problems.
BlackBerry might not be able to fix fragmentation, but it does have the smarts to make Android a more secure operating system. The fact that its first Android flagship, the Priv, was so heavily correlated with privacy and security features speaks to this.
Aboard the Priv came DTEK – BlackBerry’s security suite with which the DTEK50 shares its name. It comes as little surprise that the company would so strongly correlate its hardware with its software, because at this point it has little other strength.
As I’ve said previously in Bandwidth Blog On Air, privacy and security are two factors in the smartphone market consumers are hesitant to admit are actual problems – at least on a software level. Biometric security gives one a sense of confidence on a hardware level, but what can really be done with software from an end-user perspective? Precious little beyond backing up and being careful.
A New Hope
BlackBerry, then, can quite easily reposition itself to a software and security vendor when its hardware business fails, and from that point the company will have the brand collateral to move back into hardware should time and finance ever allow it.
That road, however, won’t be easy. BlackBerry has effectively handed over its manufacturing responsibilities to TC Communications – better known as Alcatel – allowing it to hedge its production bets. That means that the company has already exited the hardware market to a large degree.
The cost of that move as evident; one need only put the DTEK50 and Alcatel Idol 4 next to one another to see how strongly they resemble each other. BlackBerry’s hardware designs and brand ethos around hardware features are long gone – hence the reason the DTEK50 doesn’t include the company’s physical keyboard at all; a feature the company punted hard aboard the flagship Priv.
Should BlackBerry produce the Argon and Mercury? At this point, I don’t feel its worthwhile. The company has surrendered its core hardware values, and the time for a full pivot to software is nigh. Personally, I’d welcome that – I feel the company has much to add. Its virtual keyboard is brilliant, its Android tweaks favourable, and Android as a whole needs bright minds to improve its resilience on a security level.
In many ways, I’m left to feel that the DTEK50 is the phone that doomed BlackBerry; not accidentally, but wilfully.
I’ve been wrong before, and as I stated earlier, the potential remains for BlackBerry to take one more step. But the time and place to make a final exit is now, before more compromises have to be made in the name of pride.
Read: The US Senate officially drops BlackBerry for Samsung and Apple
Have your say!
What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree? Share your opinion in the comments below!
Follow Bryan Smith on Twitter: @bryansmithSA
