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Viii years agone, BlackBerry (née RIM) was riding high. The company commanded almost 25% of the global smartphone market place, a higher share than any company other than Nokia. The house was expanding its businesses in other countries and it had ridden a wave of success to go the company most people thought of when they thought nigh business organisation smartphones. Today, Blackberry's hardware business is in ruins, with a global market share of 0.0%.

That's the discussion from Gartner, which recently published its Q4 smartphone rankings. Out of 432 meg devices shipped in Q4 2022, just 207,900 of them were BlackBerry Os products. This might seem similar a dodge, since nosotros don't know how many Android devices BlackBerry sold during the same period, only I don't think it is. All indications suggest that the Priv sold poorly relative to BlackBerry'southward expectations (and even its CEO has said the phone was overpriced relative to the residue of the market). Furthermore, even if nosotros assume BlackBerry's Android devices outsold its BB10 devices by 3:1, that withal leaves the visitor with a global market share of 0.19% — significantly below Windows Phone, of all things.

Blackberry Market Share

BlackBerry's market share through CY 2022. Data and image past Statista.

I was curious to encounter if BlackBerry had said anything near its own Android sales, so I pulled the company'south financial data and earnings call transcripts. In Q1 of BlackBerry'south fiscal year 2022, the company recorded $269 million worth of acquirement in its "Hardware & Other" category. Past Q1 2022, that had fallen to $152 million. In Q3 of FY 2022, BlackBerry'southward "Hardware & Other" revenue had fallen to $62 one thousand thousand.

The company's earnings calls farther back up the idea that its smartphone hardware is effectively dead, regardless of whether it runs Android or BB10. In its Q2 FY 2022 call, the question of Android security relative to BB10 was briefly discussed, with one analyst noting that BlackBerry's "highly regulated" customers didn't see Android as an acceptable substitute for BB10. In Q3 FY 2022 not one analyst asked virtually BlackBerry's hardware sales or pin towards Android. No information was provided in Q2 or Q3 about smartphone shipments, but the declining revenue and lack of investor interest bear witness the point. BlackBerry may release a few more branded handsets, merely it'due south smartphone business organisation is dead.

BlackberryStorm

Not even Matt Smith's astonishing cheekbones or the Doctor'southward time travel could save the BlackBerry Storm (seen hither, sans BB branding).

The visitor's autumn from grace is an excellent example of what'due south sometimes called the Innovator's Dilemma. A well-established company with a dominant business model fails to conceptualize the potential for new technology or services to upend its entire marketplace. Blockbuster's failure to adapt to Netflix is one example, and BlackBerry'due south failure to reply to Apple and the rising of Android was some other. BlackBerry was focused on growing its international market and believed business concern customers would prefer devices with physical keyboards, security features, and minimum bandwidth requirements to evangelize services similar email. Simply equally 4G and LTE networks began rolling out, consumers started turning to devices that offered multimedia and convenience features that BlackBerry didn't — notably, capacitive impact screens and more avant-garde tertiary-political party apps. At the aforementioned time, corporations began turning to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies rather than strictly limiting which work phones people could use.

By the time BlackBerry realized it was hemorrhaging market share and users, information technology was also late to right the ship. Nada the company did from 2022 – 2022 had even the slightest impact on its declining market share. The fact that analysts aren't fifty-fifty asking about the production segments anymore is a clear sign that everyone expects them to vanish — and sooner, rather than later.

RIP, BlackBerry smartphones. Your parent company may well reinvent itself every bit a software firm, but the hardware side of the business is dead.