extinction and the vanishing Black Berry

An interesting article in - www.huffingtonpost.com  - attracted me and forms the nucleus of this post…………. In the US Scenario, the article asks : Did you know that Volvo is struggling to sell cars in America? Or that the sandwich chain Quiznos is in serious debt? … it lists out nine surprising companies that could actually be on the verge of dying ~ one of them we do use and hence this post.. not long ago, may be half a decade, it was a status symbol of entrepreneurs and many Corporates also provided it for their executives.

In biology, extinction is the end of an organism, normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point.  Through evolution, new species arise through the process of speciation—where new varieties of organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecological niche—and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance !!!! although some species, called living fossils, survive with virtually no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years. Most extinctions have occurred naturally, prior to Homo sapiens walking on Earth. Mass extinctions are relatively rare events; though there are some isolated incidence.

For long blackberry was only a fruit….. much like spinach, raisins, apples, plums and grapes, blackberries are rich in bioflavonoids and Vitamin C, but other nutritional benefits include a very low sodium count and having only 62 calories to a cup.  The dark blue colour ensures blackberries have one of the highest antioxidant levels of all fruits.  Consumption of blackberries can help to promote the healthy tightening of tissue,which is a great non-surgical procedure to make skin look younger. Prolonged consumption also helps keeps your brain alert, thereby maintaining clarity of thought and good memory.  In Canada, blackberries are seasonal fruits and from Canada  - came BlackBerry Limited, (formerly known as Research In Motion Limited (RIM)),  a Canadian telecommunication and wireless equipment company best known as the developer of the BlackBerry brand of smartphones and tablets.

Right before the iPhone was announced, BlackBerry phones were the most popular mobile devices on the market. They truly dominated in the "cool" factor, with every celebrity owning one. The later day  revolutionary touchscreen smartphones turned the Blackberry into a stale and antiquated device. Elsewhere a report states that in New York, the BlackBerry has become the mildly embarrassing symbol of a job as a lawyer or a banker, usually worn with an apology and protestations by the owner that they “also have an iPhone. Look!."  In Silicon Valley, it is worse: BlackBerries are regarded as museum pieces. People would be no less dismissive if you turned up to lunch with a 1980s-style brick, than if you pulled one of the Canadian handsets out of your jacket pocket. What’s the point in them, when there are so few BlackBerry apps available?  In 2012, when Marissa Mayer wanted to revamp Yahoo!’s staid image, she jettisoned  BlackBerries in favour of Apple’s sleek and fashionable alternatives.

All this at a time when the US Defence Department will give the company a new lease of life, or at least a reprieve in its cycle of decline.  Reviewers and analysts say that RIM needs to revamp its image, so that BlackBerry gains traction among the cool kids before its rivals work out how to make their handsets properly secure. All in a market, where for selling a luxury brand of car, there are models, stationed next to the vehicles as it they are accessories, all short skirts, big hair and six-inch heels. “Buy this car! You will get a sexy girl!” is the message. As marketing tools go, it is not terribly sophisticated.

In January 2013, Blackberry released its latest device -- a touchscreen smartphone. Even with popular integrated apps, the product failed to take off. Their sales have crumbled, and in September 2013, the company pre-announced second quarter earnings, reporting that they'd missed estimates by nearly 50 percent. They also announced they were cutting 4,500 workers and getting out of the consumer business, sparking up rumors that they would merge or sell the company. The Department of Defense recently offered BlackBerry some much needed good news, however, announcing that they would buy 80,000 of the company's devices.

Somebody said, what goes up will come down one day and if were to be a cycle wheel, the reverse of it is also true.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.

27^th Jan 2014

PS: inputs taken largely from huffingtonpost article.