Opinion: BlackBerry way to the consumer is to succeed in Enterprise

When John Chen took over Blackberry over a year ago, he split the company to 4 divisions. As you know the divisions are Hardware, BBM, QNX and Enterprise. After that he talked to any Media outlet and he said that the main focus is the Enterprise sector. The way back is to be dominant player in the Enterprise again, to bring back governments and top business to use Blackberry devices and MDM solution.  The first comments about it where that they switch focus from the consumer  market and not care to be small player with loyal niche users. Yes, in the short run blackberry doesn’t  care about other segments besides enterprise, but if we look beyond the next couple of years we may see a different picture. Success in the Enterprise niche will lead to more sales in the consumer market, and why you ask? Very simple to me, when 2500 workers holds Blackberry devices and like them, they would recommend to buy Blackberry to their family and friends. Yes, it’s sounds far away from what is happening now, but that’s the reason they must be a powerful player in that niche. After all that is how BlackBerry rose to success in the past. Blackberry didn’t leave the consumer market, they  are just trying  to find the way again to people’s hart, and what better way then people that tell their friends and family to buy BlackBerry because they got it at work and it’s simply Awesome. Now imagine that Blackberry got more then 500K users in enterprise not just BES12 users, I mean Blackberry devices that workers use. Those workers Experience could be the drive for more sales.  Chen said that he needs 10 million devices sold in every fiscal year to be profitable in the hardware division, he can do better with those numbers if he master the niche market for the next couple years. BBM is part of the deal, but as I see it BBM is not the product that makes you run to buy a blackberry device because but monetizing it is a way to make money for the company.  It’s great that Android, iOS and WP users use BBM, but that’s not the reason they might buy a BlackBerry. People buy what their friends have and say that the product is good. Workers that use Blackberry at work are consumers don’t forget it. So Blackberry didn’t leave that segment, they try to conquer it with different approach (like they did in the first time).

This is an opinion Column.