WhatsApp is giving up on BlackBerry

Earlier this week WhatsApp decided to celebrate its seventh birthday by breaking BlackBerry users’ hearts.

The popular messaging app which boasts 990 million users and was bought by Facebook in 2014, announced it’d be ending support for BlackBerry, Nokia and early Android phones.

“When we started WhatsApp in 2009, people’s use of mobile devices looked very different from today – about 70 percent of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia,” wrote the company in a blog post announcing the changes. “As we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use.”

While BlackBerry users chattering away on WhatsApp may be a bit disappointed by the move, the announcement isn’t likely to cause too much concern at BlackBerry headquarters.

The Waterloo-based company, which holds approximately one per cent of the consumer smartphone market, has pivoted towards the business-to-business market in recent years under the guidance of John Chen who took over the failing company in 2013.

“I think that BlackBerry has recognized that there has been a shift in the B2C marketplace and that in a number of markets, from a device perspective, they just are not competitive,” Dr. Karin Schnarr assistant professor of strategy at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business and Economics (which owes its name to BlackBerry founder Mike Laziridis) in Waterloo, told Yahoo Canada Finance.

Where the announcement could sting a bit is generating bad press for a brand that’s been beleaguered by bad press over the past five years.

“I feel that the biggest challenge for BlackBerry with the WhatsApp announcement is that it sends a signal to the broader community that the BlackBerry operating system and by extension, traditional BlackBerry devices are not relevant to today’s consumer,” says Schnarr. “It isn’t going to impact the overall strategy of the company, but if other apps follow suit, it is going to generate a stream of negative stories about BlackBerry at a time when the company is actually doing some pretty interesting things in other parts of their business.”

While you could write a whole book about the rise and fall of BlackBerry – and there has been – one of the company’s biggest oversights was its failure to foresee the success of apps and consumers willingness to give up absolute device security in to gain personal convenience or entertainment elements on their phone.

“BlackBerry, along with other tech companies, was late to the table in recognizing the popularity apps were going to have, particularly from a consumer perspective,” says Schnarr. “Combined with BlackBerry’s lag in getting a tablet to market, (ended up) creating a situation where they were just unable to compete.”

Since Chen took over, the company has doubled down on its security reputation, launching the BlackBerry Priv – an ultra secure, QWERTY keyboard phone using the app-friendly Android operating system. While the device could appeal to consumers, it’s real focus is governments or security-focused organizations like banks looking to hook their employees up with work phones.

The move is part of a bigger reshuffling by the company says Dr. Glenn Rowe, Paul MacPherson Chair in Strategic Leadership and professor at Western University’s Ivey Business School.

“When John Chen came in, what he did was look at the consumer business and he basically shut it down,” says Rowe. “He’s maintained BlackBerry’s focus on the B2B type operations and I think that’s been a very wise move.”

Going forward, Rowe suspects BlackBerry will need to avoid being distracted by the lower cost structures of the consumer market and keep its efforts in the smartphone sphere focused on secure, enterprise-friendly devices.

Schnarr agrees adding that the real growth market for the brand will be in expanding into newer, non-device offerings for businesses like information security consulting, which BlackBerry announced in late February.

“If they continue their current focus on their Business Technology Solutions division and the Internet of Things, they could quietly become the market leader in niche segments of a broad array of industries,” she says. “However, the company will still likely be much, much smaller than it was at its height from both a revenue and employee size perspective.”

But whether or not BlackBerry will still be relevant to Canadian consumers is the real question.

“I think, as Canadians, we want the company to succeed and be competitive globally,” says Schnarr. “As the company shifts its focus, I believe the brand may become less visible to consumers, but that does not mean their innovation is not there in consumer products.”

She points to the company’s QNX subsidiary role in the automotive sector.

“(It) is a leader in software for automotive electronics with products deployed in the infotainment and telematics systems of more than 50 million vehicles worldwide,” says Schnarr. “However, the customer is the automotive companies or original equipment manufacturers so the average consumer doesn’t even know it is a BlackBerry product in their vehicle.”