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Viii years ago, BlackBerry (née RIM) was riding high. The company commanded nearly 25% of the global smartphone market place, a higher share than any visitor other than Nokia. The firm was expanding its businesses in other countries and information technology had ridden a wave of success to become the visitor most people thought of when they idea about business organisation smartphones. Today, Blackberry's hardware business is in ruins, with a global market place share of 0.0%.

That'due south the word from Gartner, which recently published its Q4 smartphone rankings. Out of 432 one thousand thousand devices shipped in Q4 2016, simply 207,900 of them were BlackBerry OS products. This might seem like a dodge, since we don't know how many Android devices BlackBerry sold during the aforementioned period, but I don't call up it is. All indications suggest that the Priv sold poorly relative to BlackBerry's expectations (and even its CEO has said the phone was overpriced relative to the residue of the market). Furthermore, even if we assume BlackBerry's Android devices outsold its BB10 devices past three:1, that even so leaves the company with a global market share of 0.19% — significantly beneath Windows Phone, of all things.

Blackberry Market Share

BlackBerry'due south market share through CY 2015. Information and image past Statista.

I was curious to see if BlackBerry had said annihilation almost its own Android sales, and so I pulled the visitor's financial data and earnings call transcripts. In Q1 of BlackBerry's fiscal twelvemonth 2016, the company recorded $269 million worth of revenue in its "Hardware & Other" category. By Q1 2017, that had fallen to $152 million. In Q3 of FY 2017, BlackBerry's "Hardware & Other" revenue had fallen to $62 million.

The visitor's earnings calls further support the thought that its smartphone hardware is effectively dead, regardless of whether it runs Android or BB10. In its Q2 FY 2017 phone call, the question of Android security relative to BB10 was briefly discussed, with one analyst noting that BlackBerry'south "highly regulated" customers didn't run into Android as an adequate substitute for BB10. In Q3 FY 2017 not 1 analyst asked about BlackBerry's hardware sales or pivot towards Android. No information was provided in Q2 or Q3 about smartphone shipments, but the declining acquirement and lack of investor interest show the point. BlackBerry may release a few more branded handsets, only it's smartphone business is dead.

BlackberryStorm

Not even Matt Smith'due south amazing cheekbones or the Doc's fourth dimension travel could salve the BlackBerry Storm (seen here, sans BB branding).

The visitor'due south autumn from grace is an excellent example of what's sometimes called the Innovator'southward Dilemma. A well-established visitor with a dominant business concern model fails to conceptualize the potential for new engineering or services to upend its entire market. Blockbuster'due south failure to adjust to Netflix is ane example, and BlackBerry'southward failure to respond to Apple and the rise of Android was another. 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 deliver services like electronic mail. Simply as 4G and LTE networks began rolling out, consumers started turning to devices that offered multimedia and convenience features that BlackBerry didn't — notably, capacitive touch screens and more than advanced third-party apps. At the aforementioned time, corporations began turning to Bring Your Ain 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, it was likewise late to right the send. Nothing the company did from 2010 – 2017 had even the slightest impact on its failing market share. The fact that analysts aren't even request virtually the product segments anymore is a clear sign that anybody expects them to vanish — and sooner, rather than later.

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