In the technology space, analyst might not be right. In fact, most of the time, they were wrong. But this time, I tend to agree with the analysts.
Android (of course not forgetting iOS) is “social-friendly” which is now the idiot-free solution for all new smartphone markers if they want to enter the market. The multi-billion dollar question is how much residue left for Blackberry in this market space? Furthermore, the rising chinese phone maker is promoting aggressively in the developing countries offering insanely cheap smartphones that could perform almost everything what an iPhone could do. Does Blackberry has the capacity to compete at very least in term of price?
In my opinion, Blackberry should direct the resources to the things they are good at – Security! There are important people who do not want their phones to be “social”. All they want is to have a phone that offer secured communications and reliable that could be used in any part of the world. Having read to here, I think most of you might have already guessed what I am driving at – Satellite Phone!
For those who do not know, a satellite phone, or satphone is a type of mobile phone that connects to orbiting satellites instead of terrestrial cell sites. They provide similar functionality to terrestrial mobile telephones; voice, short messaging service and low-bandwidth internet access that are supported through most systems. (Source: Wikipedia)
By virtue of the technology, it is very difficult to trace the information transmit through satellite. Furthermore, there are existing satellite network all around the globe except for a handful of sensitive countries.
That said about the technology. The market is pretty much dominated by a handful of operators similar to those days where only Motorola and Nokia dominated the mobile phone market.
The satphone market is still at an early stage that offer very promising growth potential. With rising affluence in the global community, more businessmen will demand greater security when dealing with their business associates especially negotiating contract that contains market-sensitive information.
Blackberry is a fallen angel. Although nobody is carrying a Blackberry phone, customers generally agree to the fact that Blackberry makes good quality phone (just that they don’t buy). There is still value in the Blackberry brand.
Blackberry should leverage on this. Go extremely specialised in security and focus on enterprise customers. With their expertise, they could partner with satellite operators in helping massive adoption of the satphones which in my opinion, it is still an untapped market now.
