Blackberry Smartphone Relaunch: New Product Marketing Plan
This paper presents a comprehensive new product plan for reintroducing the Blackberry smartphone to the market. Once the dominant smartphone brand worldwide, Blackberry lost its leading position after 2011 due to slow innovation and an overemphasis on corporate users at the expense of individual consumers. The plan examines the competitive landscape through Porter's Five Forces and a SWOT analysis, identifying Blackberry's unmatched mobile security reputation, existing infrastructure, and loyal customer base as key strengths. It also outlines opportunities such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 crisis and emerging markets. Short-term marketing goals focus on product improvement, promotional discounts, and consumer engagement, while long-term goals center on search engine optimization, brand awareness, and customer loyalty.
- Introduction: Overview of Blackberry's rise, fall, and relaunch rationale
- Situational Analysis: Company background and decline since 2011
- Competitive Analysis: Key rivals, market dynamics, and Blackberry's differentiators
- Porter's Five Forces Analysis: Supplier power, buyer power, entrants, substitutes, and rivalry
- SWOT Analysis: Blackberry's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
- Marketing Strategy: Short-term promotions and long-term brand-building goals
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What makes this paper effective
- Applies two well-established analytical frameworks — Porter's Five Forces and SWOT — systematically to a real-world brand, grounding each claim in observable market conditions rather than abstract theory.
- Maintains a clear problem-solution structure: the situational analysis establishes why Blackberry failed, and the marketing strategy section directly responds to the weaknesses and opportunities identified.
- Uses concrete examples (the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 recall, President Obama's use of Blackberry, specific rival brands) to support general analytical points, making arguments more persuasive and readable.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of multi-framework analysis — combining an external forces model (Porter's Five Forces) with an internal/external audit (SWOT) before moving to strategic recommendations. This layering ensures that the marketing strategy is firmly evidence-based, and each recommendation can be traced back to a specific finding in the analysis, a technique central to business and marketing coursework.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an executive-style introduction summarizing the core argument. It then moves through a situational analysis (company background and decline), a competitive analysis (key rivals and market dynamics), Porter's Five Forces (supplier power, buyer power, new entrants, substitutes, rivalry), a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), and concludes with a two-part marketing strategy covering short-term and long-term goals. Each section builds directly on the previous one, creating a coherent analytical narrative.
Introduction
This paper provides a plan for reintroducing the failed Blackberry smartphone to the market. The Blackberry was once the most popular smartphone in the U.S. and other markets. Its formal introduction in 2006 marked a defining moment in the history of the smartphone industry. However, with its focus limited to corporate users and government agencies, Blackberry was slow to respond to the evolving needs of individual consumers. This gap presented a perfect opportunity for Apple, Samsung, and other rivals to oust Blackberry from its dominant position. By 2011, Blackberry had lost its leading position in the industry, and the smartphone continued losing market share to newer entrants offering more consumer-oriented devices. The dominance of Apple and other rivals may make it quite difficult for Blackberry to successfully re-enter the market.
The failure of the Blackberry has had a significant impact on not only the firm's performance over the last several years, but also its bargaining power over suppliers and buyers. As the dominant players in the market, Samsung and Apple now hold a substantially higher advantage over suppliers and buyers compared to Blackberry. For Blackberry to recapture its bargaining power, it must readjust its supply chain strategy and increase demand for its smartphone.
Despite this failure and reduced competitive advantage, Blackberry still holds an unbeaten reputation for mobile security. It remains the most secure smartphone compared to its rivals — a major strength given increased concerns about mobile security. The company can capitalise on this advantage to regain its relevance. More importantly, the firm can leverage the capital, technical, and reputational foundation it has built over nearly three decades of operation. Its prior experience in the smartphone market, prevailing customer base, and existing assets and infrastructure give it a particularly important advantage over both potential entrants and incumbents.
There are a number of opportunities Blackberry can depend on to reintroduce its products. These include the firm's existing customer base, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 crisis, emerging markets, the growth of cloud computing, third-party applications, and corporate-level strategies such as mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships. In the short term, the firm should focus on product improvement, sales promotion, offers and discounts, tradeshows, conventional advertising (television and print), and online consumer engagement. In the long term, the firm should focus on search engine optimisation, increasing brand awareness and recognition, and building customer loyalty.
Blackberry is certainly not the first firm to experience this kind of failure. Many other firms have been in a similar or even worse situation. Though some have been unsuccessful in reversing their decline, others have succeeded. If properly reintroduced, Blackberry can adequately compete with Apple and Samsung. Indeed, Blackberry's failure can be viewed as a learning experience that provides important lessons about responding to market needs.
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