Back in the day in 2000, some of us were very excited for BlackBerry Storm coming to the market while most of us were ready to dive into Apple’s dream. That same year, 2007, the market share of BlackBerry crumbled down to zero percent from a decent 45%. How did this happen? Did Apple crush the market or did BlackBerry lose in a fair fight? The movie BlackBerry tries to answer that.

The movie is not about Apple versus BlackBerry but is more focused on its downfall. The story of BlackBerry is based on a book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry written by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. Matthew Johnson has directed this biography in a way that most of us will spend time witnessing what went wrong with BlackBerry as this is the most crucial aspect of the story. Because despite everything, Nokia still bounced back and survived the market created by Apple. So, there must be something terribly wrong with the work culture and ethics in Research in Motion (the parent company of BlackBerry).

The biggest disadvantage I see about the company BlackBerry from the storytelling was that the top management constantly pushed for aggressive campaigning irrespective of whether the product delivers in that manner or not. This is true even in the advertisements that you might have come across for BlackBerry Boys. To top that, the terrible power dynamics among the co-founders was very visible from the beginning. The initial meeting between the co-founders, Mike Lazaridis (played by Jay Baruchel), Jim Balsillie (played by Glenn Howerton), and Douglas Fregin (played by Matthew Johnson) was such that they should have never gotten together.

Mike Lazaridis, the original ideator and developer for the product, was always of the opinion to not take manufacturing to China and degrade the product quality like others do. But, he did that too for launching BlackBerry Storm just to imitate the touchscreen capabilities of Apple’s iPhone. Now, what could have been done better by the company is totally hypothetical. From my point of view, I would have shed the BlackBerry Boys image and targeted small segment markets something similar to what Nokia did. This would have benefitted them with time and space to understand the changing market dynamics and buying pattern of the modern youth. Then, they could have adapted to it way better than getting shut down.

The story of Apple might be different here as Steve Jobs already had the worst experience in 1974 during his travel to India. This paved a way for him to start the company in 1975 with Steve Wozniak. The resiliency he showed after that to stay in the market is top notch. People say that you get enlightened when you spend time in India. The interpretation might be different. When you come from an entitled land where you enjoy things for granted, you ought to believe that there are places in the world where you can almost die to even lead a normal life. There’s nothing spiritual about it but just the harsh reality that makes you competitive enough to survive in the world.

The story of BlackBerry is unfortunately not that and should be understood in terms of what’s at stake and what can be avoided to survive instead of biting each other’s flesh off. I think you can understand only when you watch the movie.