Just a few years ago, seeing an Indian youth with a Nokia or an office-goer with a BlackBerry device on the road was a common sight.
In 2009, about 70 per cent of smartphones sold globally had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia and the two stalwarts were going strong.
But even tech leaders can, at times, fail to gauge when a particular phenomenon can go extinct.
The mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft, which account for nearly 99 per cent of sales today, were in less than 25 per cent of mobile devices sold at that time, says a recent blog post by WhatsApp which has decided to end its support to BlackBerry phones and those powered by Nokia’s Symbian OS by the end of this year.
After acquiring Nokia for $7.2 billion in 2013, Microsoft soon realised it made a big mistake and is now selling off Nokia’s phone-making business to Apple’s supply-chain partner Foxconn. With the Nokia acquisition, Microsoft actually placed a bet on hardware which has never been its strength.
On the other hand, Canadian mobile company Blackberry reported a $670 million loss in the first fiscal quarter in 2016–its biggest loss in over two years.
Is It Time for Nokia and Blackberry to Quit the Smartphone Business?
Blackberry can’t catch up on the plethora of offerings iOS and Android players are providing with their vast ecosystem. The surge in vendors offering android devices at competitive prices dominate the smartphone market globally.Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst, International Data Corporation
“Similarly, Windows-based smartphones are likely to decline sharply given the fact that Nokia is no longer a part of Microsoft,” Karthik J added.
“The high-end Blackberry Priv (based on Google’s Android OS) smartphone was a drastic approach the vendor took to revive by moving away from its homegrown OS to Android but failed to create ripples in the market,” Karthik told IANS.
According to experts, Blackberry was a little late in coming up with an Android-based smartphone.
It is not just WhatsApp that decided to end support for BlackBerry OS 10 services by the end of this year. Facebook too is leaving the BlackBerry platform after announcing it will discontinue support of its application programming interfaces (APIs) for BlackBerry.
A Revival Approach May Save Nokia and Blackberry
“BlackBerry needs to focus on feature phone market and concentrate when it comes to India if it wants to beat Chinese and established players in the country,” notes Vishal Tripathi, Research Director at global market consultancy firm Gartner.
The recent developments indicate that the pioneer of the smartphone should now take up things differently and look up to strengthen its Android platform and in creating some great hardware tooKrishna Mukherjee, Analyst (Telecoms), CyberMedia Research
When it comes to Nokia, with a proper revival approach, the Finnish company still holds a good chance to make a strong re-entry into the highly populated smartphone market in India.
Nokia continues to have a strong brand perception in India especially in lower tier cities and with its in-depth knowledge of the market, possibly it is still not too late for Nokia to make a comeback.Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst, International Data Corporation
According to Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst with CyberMedia Research, Windows still is the default enterprise OS and mobility is an extended piece within enterprise communications. “So there is a connect. It is only that Microsoft has to develop the solid links. There have to be compelling reasons,” he suggests.
All is not lost yet for Nokia and Blackberry, the two handset legacies of our times–if they understand the changing needs of the Next-Gen smartphone users, and act.
(This piece has been published in an arrangement with IANS.)
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