LOS ANGELES — In a tech landscape crowded with new gadgets and features, the BlackBerry, once the undisputed leader of the smart-phone industry, is rapidly losing ground to Apple Inc.’s iPhone and devices that run Google Inc.’s Android software.
Just two years ago, Black-Berry accounted for 43 percent of the U.S. smart-phone market. These days, that figure has dropped to about 19 percent, according to market research firm ComScore Inc.
Even longtime users acknowledge there’s something decidedly uncool about owning a BlackBerry.
“I’m like that old lady driving an Oldsmobile in a parking lot when everyone else is driving BMWs,” said Jesica Ryzenberg, 32, a BlackBerry owner in San Francisco.
Recent turmoil hasn’t helped matters, including numerous product and software delays. Several top executives at BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. have departed. More recently, the phone that built its reputation on security and reliability was struck by a three-day service failure that affected users on five continents.
And now in the ultimate sign of troubles, the company has been pegged as a takeover candidate.
Earlier this month, RIM’s stock, down almost 70 percent from the beginning of the year, fell below its book value for the first time in nine years, a sign investors consider the Canadian smartphone maker to be worth less than the net value of its property, patents and other assets, according to Bloomberg News data.
“Clearly the market has moved on,” said Chris Jones, principal analyst at research firm Canalys. “From applications to multimedia to the quality of the cameras to the quality of the browsing experience, it’s lacking in all of those areas, plus more.”
But even as BlackBerry’s share of the cell-phone market continues to shrink, analysts say, the brand is not quite this generation’s PalmPilot — yet.
In the mid-1990s, the handheld PalmPilot personal digital assistant helped spark the mobile digital revolution but rapidly became outdated as more smart phones entered the market. Last year Hewlett-Packard Co. announced that it was buying Palm Inc. for $1.2 billion.
With RIM, “I wouldn’t count them out entirely, but it’s definitely going to be an uphill battle,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee.
RIM executives are brushing off signs of trouble. They say BlackBerry continues to have a loyal customer base of 70 million subscribers, many of them professionals and young tech users, and point to a marketplace that has yet to be fully tapped: In the U.S., only 37 percent of cell-phone users have a smart phone, said Rick Costanzo, regional managing director of RIM’s Americas division.
“We are in the very early, early stages of a huge global transition, and we have everything to play for. This game is far from over,” he said. “Our challenge is to educate the marketplace.”
In August, RIM introduced the first touch-screen version of its Bold model, the 9900, plus an updated Torch slider phone and a new touchscreen-only BlackBerry. And two more models, the Black-Berry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380, will be available from carriers around the world over the coming weeks, the Waterloo, Ontario-based company said last week.
The 9790 is comparable with the Bold 9900, though smaller in dimensions and with raised function buttons below the screen.
The 9380 is the first in the Curve family to feature a touch screen and it includes socialnetworking applications such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as RIM’s free BlackBerry Messenger instant-messaging service. The Curve models, which sell for less than RIM’s top-of-the-line Bold phones, have spurred sales growth in markets such as Indonesia and India even as BlackBerry sales in the U.S. have declined.
Sales and reviews for BlackBerry devices running the company’s new OS 7 operating system, with browser speeds that are outperforming rivals, have been strong, executives say. Co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie said in a September conference call with analysts that the Black-Berry 7.0 launches were going “extremely well” and that the company felt well-positioned for the Christmas season.
RIM is rolling out several new features and devices in the coming months, including a software upgrade to its PlayBook tablet in February that will enable the device to run Android apps. Next year, the company is planning to release its BBX operating system, which will also be compatible with Android apps, to phones and tablets.
Analysts say that although BlackBerry’s image has slipped in the U.S., the brand still has a strong foothold in regions including Southeast Asia, Latin America, Britain and India, where growth has been robust and BlackBerrys are seen as a status symbol.
Loyal BlackBerry users such as Tyson Lee, 34, say that although the phones aren’t trendy anymore, they still get the job done. Lee prefers the BlackBerry’s physical keyboard over the iPhone’s touch screen.
“I’m not the usual BlackBerry user where it was thrust on me by work; I actually sought it out,” said Lee, a mechanical engineer from Downey, Calif. “I’m comfortable with it. Yeah, it’s slow. I’ve seen faster browsers on the iPhone and Android, but I really can pop out an e-mail faster than any of my friends.”
But the smart-phone market is about much more than wireless e-mail these days, and BlackBerry has lagged behind when it comes to innovation, Sterne Agee’s Wu said. Even one of BlackBerry’s strongest customer bases — corporations hooked by the device’s solid security capabilities — has been weakened by the so-called consumerization of IT that developed during the economic downturn.
To cut back on costs, many businesses stopped providing employees with BlackBerrys but allowed them to bring in their own smart phones, which were then configured for work use. With so much buzz surrounding newer brands, many workers opted to buy iPhones and other devices.
As RIM tries to win back or draw new customers in the U.S., many former BlackBerry aficionados say it may be too late.
Information for this article was contributed by Nathan Olivarez-Giles of the Los Angeles Times and by Hugo Miller and Jonathan Browning of Bloomberg News.
Business, Pages 21 on 11/21/2011