BlackBerry today is Microsoft Mobile tomorrow?

After Microsoft released its ipad version of Office, the BlackBerry released its financial results for fiscal year 2014, with a decline of 64% per cent year-on-year, showing the huge challenge for BlackBerry CEO Chen to revive the BlackBerry. At the same time, BlackBerry announced its open cross-platform BBM users to 85 million, but the smartphone based on its own BlackBerry system sold only about 1.3 million, compared to the previous quarter of 1.9 million, the same period last year 6 million. Notably, the share of BlackBerry revenue has changed again in the current quarter, with revenues from the hardware business continuing to fall, with a fourth quarter of 37%, a third quarter of 40%, and a fourth quarter of 61% in the previous fiscal year. While BlackBerry appears to be planning for its CEO Chen to serve and software as the main source of future BlackBerry revenues and profits, BlackBerry has opened one of its core applications to Apple iOS and Google's Android platform for mobile rivals last year BBM. But as we had expected, since BBM is one of the BlackBerry ecosystems and core applications, its opening to rival platforms will no doubt weaken the market and users ' reliance on and purchase of BlackBerry hardware (mainly BlackBerry smartphones), and given the business model that BBM has not yet identified on the rival platform, and BBM applications on rival platforms, which make it difficult to stand out on the opponent's platform and gain significant revenue, on the contrary, drag down the sales of hardware, resulting in the continued decline of BlackBerry's overall business. All this has emerged from the latest BlackBerry earnings, namely, a sharp drop in shipments, revenues and profits. According to relevant statistics, the current BlackBerry market share is only about 1%. If the BlackBerry, which is now a complete stand-alone ecosystem of mobile devices, is on the verge of collapse, then another player, Microsoft, is not as optimistic about the situation as it is. With about 3% of the smartphone market and the same percentage of Tablet PCs, Microsoft has the name of the world's third-largest ecosystem, but the third is a misnomer compared with Google's Android and Apple iOS. And what worries us is that Microsoft's dilemma is coinciding with the BlackBerry. The most typical and similar performance is to open your core application to your opponent's platform. For example, the ipad version of Office. The industry knows that Microsoft's new ipad app, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint, has been a great success when the ipad version of Office Apple has been on the App Store for a day, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the ipad app The store's free list occupies the top three, and the fourth is Microsoft's application, the newly designed Microsoft OneNote. To this end, Microsoft CEO Nadra (Satya Nadella) is still on Twitter to look like ipad users will have a productive Friday!Tweets to show off and celebrate. But we remind Nadra that last year BlackBerry launched BBM apps for Google's Android and Apple iOS platforms and soared to the top of Apple and Google's App store downloads. That is, the first week of the BBM two versions added 20 million users to BBM. But then it gradually stabilized, and eventually withdrew from the top 50 iOS and the top 100 Google Play apps list. Of course, BlackBerry BBM is completely free of charge. In contrast, Microsoft's ipad version of Office, although free banner, but really want to do office itself should have the editing function, users still need to become Office365 subscribers, and Office365 family version of the annual fee is 99.99 U.S. dollars (the Chinese market is 518 yuan). Do not know how many users because of the surface of the free to download the ipad version of Office, and to download after the use of the discovery also needs to pay to become Office365 subscribers and give up, in short, simply to the ipad version of Office Download volume to measure the real meaning of Microsoft's strategy is not big. To be precise, the ultimate consideration for the success of the ipad version of Office and the real meaning for Microsoft is to see how much the Offcie365 Subscriber has grown, or that it has become a Office365 subscriber through the ipad version of Office. It is not difficult to see, the ipad version of Office is mantis before, the real Oriole is Office365, but from the current Office365 subscribers around 3.5 million, the user's demand is not strong. This means that the ipad version of Office is also hard to create substantial value for Microsoft. Even the number of users is growing. Compared to the value created through the ipad version of Offic, the attack on the Windows tablet of office as the selling point of 2113.html "> Microsoft Surface and OEM partners is more visible. Like the BlackBerry's Open BBM app, its smartphone sales have fallen similarly. That is, the growth of BBM users (mainly thanks to rival platforms), instead of returning these users to or opting for the BlackBerry ecosystem (including smartphone hardware), has accelerated the loss of this segment of the user and the choice of new users for the opponent's ecosystem. The most typical example is the 200-dollar trade-in recycling service, launched by U.S. operator T this February 19, that any BlackBerry user can bring a BlackBerry to replace any new handsets, including new BlackBerrys or iphones and Android phones. In addition, in order to further curry favor with BlackBerry fans, T in the original swap on the basis of the BlackBerry Q10 and Z10 discount 50 dollars, but unfortunately, T internal sales memo shows that 94% of the choice to participate in the activity of the BlackBerry users, have given up the continued use of blackThe BlackBerry, turned to other brands of mobile phones. And compared to BlackBerry, with the exception of its own surface (hardware and software), as well as OEM partners Windows Licensing and Office licensing dual revenue, so once the transplant effect appears, Microsoft suffered more losses. This loss is strategic to Microsoft (not the loss of revenue and profits to measure). Similarly, in the smartphone market, after Microsoft launched its ipad version of Office, it announced that it was free of office based on iphone and Android handsets, and simply ceded one of Windows Phone's core apps to rivals, This will no doubt add to the pressure on the ailing Microsoft Windows Phone phone. While Microsoft's previous opening of office to the iphone and Android phone platform did not significantly lead to a slowdown in Windows Phone handsets, it has not seen any growth. To sum up, in our view, Microsoft's current development strategy in the mobile market (tablet and smartphone) is very similar to that of BlackBerry, that is, in the name of services and software, the core applications of their own ecosystems are opened to the opponent platform, resulting in the separation of hardware, systems and applications in their own ecosystems, The weakening of the competitiveness of its own ecosystems, including systems and hardware, is likely to be fatal, given the marginalization of BlackBerry and Microsoft in the mobile market.