Leveraging on the weakness of the competition

Some few years ago, having a BlackBerry, was a flex (bragging right), as we say it here in Ghana. Mainly because of the BB Messenger. This messenger was the first of its kind for any phone, or I should say one of the first of its kind. This messenger, as we all know allows you to easily chat with anyone’s BB Pin you have. Well, using a BB came at a huge cost, even more than buying a data now, but who born dog, you are forced to buy it so you can keep in touch with your people in your contact list. When your 30 days subscription is over, you are automatically cut off, even from browsing the net, but most people endured it, and kept renewing their subscription. Least I forget, I must add that using a BB was indeed a flex, people make it clearly known that they are using BB. I remembered there was even a Nigerian movie called BlackBerry girls.

Research In Motion (RIM), the brand owners of BB never imagined that a time will come that they will get any competition. But their worse unexpected fear happened when WhatSapp exploded into existence. Then guess what, BB Messenger was, I don’t know if it is still now available on the AppStore. BB Messenger has been made freely available for download. I remembered few people were flexing and will tell others about their BB Pin. At this point, it was difficult to differentiate between those who were real owners of BB and those who downloaded it, but who cares?

Gradually, gradually, WhatSapp took over the market. Now, before anyone buys any phone, one of the major questions is does the phone support WhatSapp? The point here is, WhatSapp is now leading, and where is BB Messenger? Obviously, WhatSapp has given BB Messenger a big gap like Hussein Bolt in a 100m race. Not only that, even now if you give anyone a BB for free, I am sure majority will say No, thanks, but except for the very very latest versions. Well, there is no more monthly subscription on BB on the latest versions as it used to be. How time flies, the once most valuable has now become a scrap.

I can firmly say that most BB phones are now “non-entity” primary because WhatSapp does not support such phones anymore. Who in this age will want to use a phone which is not WhatSapp complaint, even my grandmother wants to use WhatSapp.

If the BB people (RIM) had ever foreseen a simple app like WhatSapp will ever throw them out of business, I am sure they would have thought better and planned better. I remembered ever reading an article that talks about leveraging on what someone is doing and make a better competitive product to throw out the competitor out of the market. That is what WhatSapp might simply have done. They made their app free for download and to use. No compulsory terms attached to it as BB was doing. And now, BB is out of the market!

What business are you doing today and you think you are on top of the world? What are you doing today without thinking about the future implications. Will you want to remain a BB, strict and difficult, yet people survived it, or think about the future and prepare for it as such? Well, the choice is yours!