The document is a market research report on BlackBerry conducted by a group of students. It includes an executive summary that outlines the reasons for conducting the research, the research question, and key results and recommendations. The research aimed to examine young users' attitudes and perceptions of BlackBerry and what factors influence their mobile purchase decisions. The results showed that while past BlackBerry users had a positive experience, they have now turned away from the brand due to it being seen as outdated. Younger users prioritize features, quality, and usability over brand loyalty when choosing a phone. The recommendations call for BlackBerry to improve their smartphone design, operating system, and app selection to better compete.

1. Market Research
Research Report
Emily Gaszynski
Ahmed Alghamdi, Andres Camilo Prieto Munoz, Daniel Zamora, Rafael
Gual Bojalil, Moazzam Khan
4-19-2016

2. Letter of Transmittal
Thursday-14th
- 2016
Ms. Emily Gaszynski,
Faculty Member
School of Business,
Humber College
Subject: Submission of research report for the course Market Research
Dear Ma’am,
We as a group have prepared a report on a Canadian technology company namely Blackberry. In
view of that we have worked together as a team with enthusiasm, applying our knowledge and
understanding learnt in class. We hope to reply the approaches thought to us.
Please do contact us if any further information is required regarding this report.
Sincerely,
Mr. Ahmed Alghamdi
Mr. Andres Camilo Prieto Munoz
Mr. Daniel Zamora
Mr. Rafael Gual Bojalil
Mr. Moazzam Khan

3. Table of Content
Contents
Executive Summary.................................................................................................................................3
Reasons for doing the research study ..................................................................................................3
Research problem/question statement................................................................................................3
Some of our Research Sub-objectives are: .......................................................................................3
Results.................................................................................................................................................3
Recommendations & Conclusions........................................................................................................3
RESEARCH REPORT..................................................................................................................................4
Project Background .............................................................................................................................4
Reasons for doing the research study ..............................................................................................4
Summary of key information learnt from secondary research..............................................................4
Purpose of the Research......................................................................................................................5
Research problem/question statement............................................................................................5
Research Sub-objectives: .................................................................................................................5
Data Sources: ......................................................................................................................................6
Secondary Sources...........................................................................................................................6
Primary Sources...............................................................................................................................6
Research Design ..................................................................................................................................6
Timeline: .............................................................................................................................................7
Limitations of the Project.....................................................................................................................7
Results ....................................................................................................................................................8
Conclusions...........................................................................................................................................15
Recommendations ................................................................................................................................15
Appendix...............................................................................................................................................16
Bibliography..........................................................................................................................................17

4. Executive Summary
Reasons for doing the research study
We live in a world of technology, where everything we use revolves around some sort of
innovation. That being said, the telecommunication industry is a sector which has been growing
faster over the years. This in turn has lead to continuous development of equipment which has
altered consumer’s behavior in a number of ways. Nowadays the fierce competition within the
smartphone’s industry has left BlackBerry almost out of the game. A company which boasted
around 40% of the market share in the early 2000’s has now been reduced to less than 1%.
Research problem/question statement
To examine the attitudes and perception of the younger audience towards BlackBerry and what
factors influence them to make a mobile purchase.
Some of our Research Sub-objectives are:
· What is the current stance of young users towards BlackBerry?
· Are there still users who are loyal to the brand?
· What are the elements that young users liked/or still like about BlackBerry?
Results
As seen from the research it is very evident that almost all the users who have used the
BlackBerry phone did at one point have, to some extent, a positive review. But as new, faster and
technologically superior phones were introduced into the market, especially the Iphone,
BlackBerry was not able to keep up with the pace. This is the main reason why users now will not
go back to using BlackBerry. Other reasons for users not being a fan of BlackBerry are:
 Its old fashioned
 It doesn't have an appealing design
 It has an obsolete operating system
 Most importantly it has lost its hold on being the phone that provides most security.
These reasons expressed by the users clearly suggest that BlackBerry has lost its strong customer
base and is no longer seen as a trendy, technologically driven or a good phone to have.
Recommendations & Conclusions
 Blackberry need to enhance their smartphones designed to be more appealing.
 Blackberry need to improve or develop their operating system to be more customer
friendly.
 Blackberry need to enhance the features of their smartphone to be compatible with the
smartphone industry such as camera, touchscreen and keyboard.
 Blackberry need to improve their application store, so it will have a variety of up to date
applications.
 Blackberry should sale their new smartphone under another name as people associated
the name of blackberry with old and outdated.

5. RESEARCH REPORT
Project Background
Reasons for doing the research study
We live in a world of technology, where everything we use revolves around some sort of
innovation. That being said, the telecommunication industry is a sector which has been growing
faster over the years. This in turn has lead to continuous development of equipment which has
altered consumer’s behavior in a number of ways. Nowadays the fierce competition within the
smartphone’s industry has left BlackBerry almost out of the game. A company which boasted
around 40% of the market share in the early 2000’s has now been reduced to less than 1%. This
raises multiple questions such as:-
· How can a company which focuses on technological innovation such as BlackBerry lose so
much of its market share?
· What was it that the consumers were looking for and Blackberry failed to deliver?
· What the company did wrong along the way to lose so many of its loyal customers?
These reasons along with the fact that it used to be one of the biggest Canadian brands is why we
chose BlackBerry and want to conduct a descriptive research to find a solution for the betterment
of BlackBerry's image.
Summary of key information learnt from secondary research
BlackBerry at its time of launch used to be the market leader in the mobile phone market. They
were the pioneers who introduced the first QWERTY keyboard mobile. Which coupled with its
security features and easy email accessibility made it the perfect phone for business people. But
their success was short lived. In 2008 Apple entered the market with its iPhone. It was all downhill
for BlackBerry then. BlackBerry, due to its huge market share did not take heed of the new found
threat and firmly believed that the BlackBerry users would stick to their phone and thought they
knew better about their consumers. They could not have been more wrong.
In 2007 Apple signed a deal with AT&T to bring its phones in the market. This lead to Verizon
approaching BlackBerry and asked them to create a phone that would wipe Apple’s iPhone out;
the only catch, the phone would need to be a touch screen with no keyboard. The product was a
BlackBerry Storm. This phone was not user friendly, many consumers hated it, it´s hardware was
inferior and to top it all it was introduced in the market months later compared to the iPhone.
Verizon then turned to google and its new operating system Android, and executed a massive
marketing campaign around Motorola’s Android. Their introduction did not hurt Apple but instead
started to eat into BlackBerry’s market share.
By 2012 the mobile market showed a shift in terms of their preference when selecting a mobile
phone. They moved on from looking at its hardware capabilities to its software capabilities. This is
when BlackBerry was completely wiped out. The Android and iOS software was not only more
advanced but easy to understand and use, while the software used by BlackBerry was complex.
This lead BlackBerry to take some drastic actions. Instead of listening to what customers wanted

6. they started to assume they knew what their consumers needed. Trying to satisfy two very
separate and distinct set of consumers (1 the corporate users 2. The younger audience) BlackBerry
went on to work on a phone which had a camera, music player and a game. This went horribly
wrong once again and the phone was not liked by either of the audience. The apps being created
by BlackBerry were uglier when compared to Android and Apple. To counter its failure once again
one of BlackBerry’s co CEO pushed his already developing idea, to market the BBM service as a
separate feature known as SMS 2.0 that could be available to all phones via the service providers
for a fee. This idea at that time looked promising.
By 2013 close to its execution BlackBerry’s top management had an overhaul which resulted in
the shelving of SMS 2.0 and yet again the launch of another phone the BlackBerry Z10. This phone
was introduced with a better operating system to cater to the shift in consumer liking towards
software. But this once again had failed to hit the bullseye. BlackBerry has introduced a phone,
which it should have at the launch of iPhone. Since 2013 BlackBerry has been struggling with its
line of phones introducing one or two phones over the years while the competition comes
launches a new phone every few months. Currently BlackBerry has finally considered adopting the
Android operating system as their future plan.
Purpose of the Research
Research problem/question statement
To examine the attitudes and perception of the younger audience towards BlackBerry and what
factors influence them to make a mobile purchase.
Research Sub-objectives:
· What is the current stance of young users towards BlackBerry?
· Are there still users who are loyal to the brand?
· What are the elements that young users liked/or still like about BlackBerry?
· What made the young users turn away from purchasing BlackBerry?
· What info do young users use to make a phone purchase?
· Is the way the phone looks/features important when making a purchase?
· Is it important for a user to buy a phone which may be easily compatible with other
devices e.g. TV, computer etc.
· What new innovations would users like to see in a phone which would influence their
decision to buy that phone?

7. Data Sources:
Secondary Sources
In order to collect data pertaining to our research questions we as a team have carried of
secondary research. Here we have gather information and data from
· Newspaper articles
· The BlackBerry company website
· Online case studies about BlackBerry
· Articles about BlackBerry
· Articles having interviews of Managers at BlackBerry
· Articles about comparison between BlackBerry and its competitors
As a next step in-order to further understand BlackBerry we would need
· Previous official statistics of BlackBerry in terms of marketing plans and strategies so as
to examine BlackBerry’s thought process and what they did along the way to market
their products to their consumers
· Historic data and information about the smartphone market till date inclusive of launch
dates and types of phones, innovations and technological developments so as to have a
clear comparison of how the competition evolved what they might have done right and
how they managed to steal market share away from BlackBerry.
· Previous research conducted about the mobile market and its consumers so as to get a
better understanding of the market and its users, how they think, what their likes or
dislikes are and what their reactions were to the question posed at that point in time.
Primary Sources
To make our research findings and understandings more concrete we would need to gather first
hand data from primary sources so as to get more up to date/current knowledge about the market.
Their likes and dislikes, how they make a purchase decision, what they look for when selecting
their choice of mobile etc. This will help us to solidify our understanding of the users and what
BlackBerry should do as the next steps. We would need to gather information by
· Questionnaires
Research Design
As a team we established that we will be using Quantitative approach to provide information and
knowledge about this project from a range of stakeholders.
Quantitative Approach: This approach will be undertaken to gain a wider range of information.
The survey will be in the form of a questionnaire survey having 15 questions (a mix of open ended
and multiple choice will be used) and this will be sent out online to 30 young mobile phone users
nationally.

8. Timeline:
Activity Number Activity Details Timeline in weeks
1 Questionnaire/Interview Development 2
2 Data collection 1
3 Conducting analysis 3
4 Report preparation 2
5 Final touches .5
Limitations of the Project
The possible limitations that can be experienced are
· Time Limitations
· Budget limitations
· Limitation to access to official documents
· Cultural biases
· Sample size limitations

9. Results
1. Age
The biggest cohort of respondents were from the age of 28 to 35 years old aiming to almost 50%
of the total. Which fits the target intended to reach from the survey.
2. Gender
We got almost half responses for each gender Male and Women.
3. Occupation
We got mainly young professionals from majority of respondents with 60% which matched
4. Do you own a smartphone?
96.8% of the surveyed people owned a smartphone.
5. Which smartphone do you have (brand)?
The IPhone and Samsung
6. Level of Satisfaction with the current phone
When we asked the respondents if they are satisfied with their current smartphone, 93% of them
are satisfied taking into consideration the overall of features their current phone offers. Just 6.7%
percent of the respondents are not satisfied with their current phone and in the follow question
we will discuss why.

10. 7. Satisfaction Specification
Focusing on the respondents that are not satisfied with their current smartphone, 50% of them
does not like the camera that the phone has. On the other hand, the other 50% of the unsatisfied
respondents are not completely satisfied with the downloadable content their smartphone
platform offers.
8. Research before buying a phone
Asking the respondents if they do any type of research before considering buying or changing their
current phone, we obtain a high positive response. 93.3% of the people surveys answer they
actually do some kind of research before buying a phone, against 6.7% of the respondents that
does not do any kind of research. In the follow question we will specify which kind of research it is
being done by the positive respondents.

11. 9. Sources of Research
Analyzing the respondents that do a previous research before buying a smartphone, we can clearly
see a high number of people using social media as a method of research, representing 60.7% of
respondents. Additionally, 53.6 % of the respondents use their friends as a reference to buy a
phone, and 39.3% used another type of research that was not specified in the survey. Moreover,
35.7% of the respondents follow a family advice in order to decide which phone they should buy.
Finally, the remaining 3.6% of the respondents used TV commercials and other kind of
advertisement as a method of research when buy a smartphone.
10. Main uses of your smartphone
When we asked to our respondents what is the usage they give to their phone, most respondents
answer they use their phone for internet purposes and making calls or texting, representing 96.7%
of the people who participates in the survey. Additionally, 90% of the respondents use their phone
for taking pictures and videos, and 83.3% answered they mainly use its phone for using
applications they have on its phone. Following this percentage, 70% of the respondents use their
phone for listening music and the percentage left uses their phone for gaming, reading books and
other non-specified activities.

12. 11. Influencing factors when buying a phone
Analyzing what influences our respondents when buying a phone. 36.7% of the respondents think
features are the most important thing when buying a smartphone. Following this percentage, 20%
of the respondents believe, quality and usability are the most significant factor a smartphone most
have. Additionally, 10% of the respondents believe design and loyalty are important facts for a
new phone, and finally, 3.3% of the respondents think the brand image it’s a factor to consider
when buying a phone, which is the lowest influencer factor on the survey.
12. Individually rate the mobile phone brand from 1 to 10 in terms of looks, features,
quality and usability.
SAMSUNG
Results:
As we can see in the table, the most common
answer for this brand was 9. Out of 30 people
who own smartphone 9 people ( 30% of the
people who answered the survey) perceive
Samsung as a brand with high quality, looks,
features and usability.
SONY
Results:
According to the table, the most common
answer for this brand was 5. Out of 30 people
who own smartphone 7 people ( 23.3% of the
people who answered the survey) perceive
SONY as a brand with average quality, looks,
features and usability.

13. APPLE
Results:
According to the table, the most common answer for this
brand was 10. Out of 30 people who own smartphone
11 people ( 36.7% of the people who answered the
survey) perceive Apple as a brand with Top High quality,
looks, features and usability.
BLACKBERRY
Results:
According to the table, the most common answer
for this brand was 6. Out of 30 people who own
smartphone 6 people ( 20% of the people who
answered the survey) perceive BlackBerry as a
brand with average quality, looks, features and
usability. However the results for this brand were
similar in some cases. For example, 4 people
answered the quality of BlackBerry is 2 and other 4
people answered the quality is 3. Each one of this
answers represent 13.3% of the population of the
survey. Having here a 26.6% of people who perceive
BlackBerry as a brand with Low quality, looks,
features and usability.
LG
Results:
According to the table, the most common answer for this
brand was 6. Out of 30 people who own smartphone 7
people ( 23.3% of the people who answered the survey)
perceive LG as a brand with average quality, looks,
features and usability.

14. 13. Have you used BlackBerry phone?
Yes 16 (53.3%)
No 14 (46.7%)
Results:
The graphic show us that 16 people that answered the survey have used
a BlackBerry phone in the past.
14.If applicable, how was your experience with BlackBerry?
(Being 0 extremely disappointed and 10 Extremely happy)
Results:
The results show us that most of the people
have had a good average experience with
BlackBerry. 6 people answered 7 as the overall
experience they have had with the brand,
representing 37.5% of the population surveyed
(37.5% of the people who have had a BlackBerry
phone in the past).
15. Please elaborate in a few words the reason for your rating above.
Results:
 Badly designed phone, only BBM was worth
using
 It was a great invention at the time but not
anymore
 It was good because of the BB messenger
 Blackberry has boring apps and their AppStore
has nothing
 Secure Phone for Corporate Emails but not as
smart as other brand phones these days
 It was many years ago, did not have the same
applications as today's smartphones have
 It has a good user interface but lacked some
features
 Easy to use
 It was one of the best phones i ever used. Compact
and easy to use and loved the design.
 It isn't as easy to use as any other smart phone. Plus a
lot of features of blackberry were useless for me
 First smartphone so was good
 Lack of innovation
 Used it mainly for work, emails and correspondence.
It did not have a lot of applications and it was not a
very good looking phone either
 It did the job
 It used to be good

15. 16. Would you consider buying a BlackBerry phone?
Results:
Yes 2 (6.7%)
No 28 (93.3%)
Results:
The results obtained show us that 93.3% of the people surveyed (28
people) would not consider to buy a BlackBerry phone in the future.
17. Please elaborate in a few words the reason why you would or would not buy a
BlackBerry phone.
Results:
 Their features and tech specs are way to
inferior and the have proven in the past
that the brand lacks of expertise in the
use of OS and Apps
 I don't think it provides the features I
now use, Samsung has snagged me
 With new look and use
 I don't know anyone who has one!
 I think it lost it's glamour
 It is old and nothing special about it now
 Oldfashioned
 It is obsolete
 IPhone prefer
 I find the keypad difficult to type in and
don't like the design and look of it
 I don't need corporate email on BB
anymore plus Apple is proving to be as
secure as BB with more features
 Too outdated
 very happy with my iPhone
 I like Samsung.
 I prefer Apple phones and do not want to
switch
 I prefer Apple phones
 Never used
 I definitely would consider getting a blackberry
when I buy a phone next.
 I'm happy with Samsung
 I wouldn't because I like having a touchscreen
phone
 I find blackberries for business workers and are
complicated , as a teacher i am satisfied with a
simple smartphone
 Not what i would look for
 Used a blackberry a long time ago. Maybe 10
years. Wasn't a fan. I'm sure it has way better
phones now. But the main reason I wouldn't
even think of buying a blackberry is because I'm
very happy with my iPhone.
 Other brands are better
 Because its technology is obsolete
 The brand has a lot of disadvantages with
respect other brands, design, system
 As it is old fashioned and the operating system
in the phone is outdated now
 It's outdated
 There are better phones in the market

16. Conclusions
As seen from the research it is very evident that almost all the users who have used the
BlackBerry phone did at one point have, to some extent, a positive review. But as new, faster and
technologically superior phones were introduced into the market, especially the Iphone,
BlackBerry was not able to keep up with the pace. This is the main reason why users now will not
go back to using BlackBerry. Other reasons for users not being a fan of BlackBerry are:
1. Its old fashioned
2. It doesn't have an appealing design
3. It has an obsolete operating system
4. Most importantly it has lost its hold on being the phone that provides most security.
(Which Apple phones provide as well)
These reasons expressed by the users clearly suggest that BlackBerry has lost its strong customer
base and is no longer seen as a trendy, technologically driven or a good phone to have. One of
the strongest points of BlackBerry was that their phones were designed for business people and
a couple of years ago there were not too much options for that target people. However Iphone
and Samsung start creating a wider variety of phone for differents targets in the market and
that´s why they have increase significantly their shares and that´s why BlackBerry has lost their
share in the phone market. BlackBerry would need to do major overhaul of the brand, maybe to
the extent of starting fresh with a new name if it wants to compete in the extremely competitive
smartphone market.
Recommendations
· Blackberry need to enhance their smartphones designed to be more appealing.
· Blackberry need to improve or develop their operating system to be more customer
friendly.
· Blackberry need to enhance the features of their smartphone to be compatible with
the smartphone industry such as camera, touchscreen and keyboard.
· Blackberry need to improve their application store, so it will have a variety of up to
date applications.
· Blackberry should sale their new smartphone under another name as people
associated the name of blackberry with old and outdated.

17. Appendix

18. Bibliography
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