Originally Posted by
EinBB Even if I"m a person working in finance, before doing a 180 turn into studying finance I used to study psychology, and as a result I remained with a lot of the quirks some people could call pretty judgmental.
To not write an extensive post most people wouldn't read, I'll just write about why the Priv didn't do better in sales as it was supposed to be, and I'm not saying that I might be right, but it's another perspective from an angle no one thought to see the situation before (not as far as I know at least).
So, without further ado,
Priv sales were subpar because the current market of smartphone buyers isn't able to accept a phone such as the Priv.
Oh yes, and I'm here to tell you why.
1.When we remember the past PKB Android phones, we remember the early days of Android, where seemingly every manufacturer had at least one phone with PKB. What made the difference was the aimed customer base: Blackberry back then was still selling to corporate a lot of PKB phones, while on Android they struggled because people didn't particularly want a PKB phone, and a landscape PKB phone was the salt in the wound. Going back 2-3 years ago when for Android screens started getting bigger and bigger, the same question was put: will the customer base start learning to use their phones 2-handed? Well, for larger screens it did, for landscape PKBs it did not. Only Blackberry could pull off the portrait PKB "gimmick" (I say it in quotation marks because it isn't for us BB users, but in the current Android all-touch market it appears like one) because it has a history in nailing it on the spot regarding keyboards. So, as number 1, it is PKB in 2015-2016 running Android appears too much as a gimmick to the overall smartphone market.
2.There is well-established fanaticism in a lot of sectors in the smartphone market, and I doubt there is anyone here unfamiliar with things such as iPhone fanboys: we've all seen them at least once shilling actively why their phone is better than the rest, and over time that began to happen with Androids phones as well, particularly Samsung. Blackberry jumped into the Android space without any such fanboys. If we are to take a holistic view of who bought the Priv, we can see the following sort of people: Blackberry nostalgics (yes, people who went from BB10 to Android as part of this sector too) and people who wanted a different take on the Android experience. Priv succeeded in getting these two groups' attention, but these groups aren't particularly big. So, as number 2, Blackberry jumped pretty much blind into the Android space, unsure who will buy the Priv.
3.The psychological general profiles of the great majority of the smartphone buyers are incompatible with a phone such as the Priv. Yes, now this is the point I wanted to write the most about, because this sticks out as the most obvious.
When you hear Blackberry, what comes into your mind? Blackberry being a signifier, by itself it's nothing more than a sound coming out of your mouth. The signifiED is where all the magic happens, aka the hidden meanings of the word, aka all the things pasted to the signifier. So what does that come up with? Corporate culture, Wall St, PKBs, the red LED notification light, top-tier security, BBM, not to mention the iconic sounds (in case anyone who reads this doesn't know, do a Google search of them). You can see a trend here, these are the signified of a serious company, constructing serious phones for serious people who intend on using it for serious work (inb4 someone says office work isn't serious).
Here is where we connect this aspect with the reason why Priv underperformed: Blackberry built a phone for a very small and polar opposite spectrum of the smartphone buyer market. The great majority of people buy smartphones as status symbols, because of sheep mentality, due to looks or performance; 95% of the market has been summarised in these words. Status symbol, sheep mentality and looks are the reason why Apple owns a good chunk of the smartphone market by itself with only one phone brand, the iPhone. A Priv is neither a status symbol phone, nor one susceptible to sheep mentality, nor particularly performing. Looks remain subjective because there is no one size fits all approach to what makes a phone pretty or not. So, the Priv is a phone aimed at a very small sector of the buyer's market.
In closing, I'd like to say that I'm sorry if this judgement sounds very shallow and general, but this is how market research is done. As well, the reason I didn't touch at all over specs or technical issues, the reason is because that is going too much in-depth and by no means capable to partially explain, at least in this post, why Priv didn't do well overall. I think we can all agree that you can build the absolute best-looking, overperforming phone out there, but if no one buys it, it was all for nothing, hence why specs weren't something to address in this post.