BlackBerry Limited SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by BlackBerry Limited managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is an important technique to map out the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) BlackBerry Limited is facing in its current business environment.

The BlackBerry Limited is one of the leading firms in its industry. BlackBerry Limited maintains its prominent position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis an immensenly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the company such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.

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The SWOT Analysis framework enables an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the BlackBerry Limited to develop four types of strategies:

SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

BlackBerry Limited swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect BlackBerry Limited strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to BlackBerry Limited SWOT Analysis

Strengths of BlackBerry Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, BlackBerry Limited has numerous strengths that enable it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of BlackBerry Limited are –

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Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years BlackBerry Limited has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of BlackBerry Limited just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. BlackBerry Limited is investing huge resources in training and development of its employees resulting in a workforce that is not only highly skilled but also motivated to achieve more.
Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
Strong distribution network – Over the years BlackBerry Limited has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – BlackBerry Limited is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Superb Performance in New Markets – BlackBerry Limited has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.

Weakness of BlackBerry Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where BlackBerry Limited can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of BlackBerry Limited
The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of BlackBerry Limited are below the industry average.
Limited success outside core business – Even though BlackBerry Limited is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though BlackBerry Limited is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.

Opportunities for BlackBerry Limited – External Strategic Factors

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Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of BlackBerry Limited.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for BlackBerry Limited to capture new customers and increase its market share.
Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.
The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as BlackBerry Limited to increase its profitability.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of BlackBerry Limited products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided BlackBerry Limited an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the BlackBerry Limited . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable BlackBerry Limited to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.

Threats BlackBerry Limited Facing - External Strategic Factors

Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of BlackBerry Limited
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for BlackBerry Limited in those markets.
As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for BlackBerry Limited

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of BlackBerry Limited
SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of BlackBerry Limited

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis BlackBerry Limited managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of BlackBerry Limited

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

SWOT Worksheet & Template

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

References / Citations & Bibliography

M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)