I predict blackberry drops the hardware side and moves to a services company supporting Android and iOS.
BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
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Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#12Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#13Slightly misleading title. BlackBerry has assembled a group to look at all future options- including a sale. Seems more likely they'll partner with someone. Or maybe sell off just their hardware business. I think BB as a whole isn't going away just yet.
I think they have stated quite publicly and explicitly: The company is for sale.
BlackBerry Ltd.'s board of directors has formed a special committee to explore “strategic alternatives,” including the possible sale of the company.
Like I said, a sale is one of the things being considered in a long list of other options. But the title doesn't convey that.
Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#14Canonical should buy them. It would give them a platform for their Ubuntu OS on phones, instead of trying to use crowd-funding.
Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#15They (or the company that buys them) should license BB10 to others. Like Microsoft does with windows mobile... It's the only path I can see for the blackberry OS to survive. Otherwise they'll be utterly crushed.
They could survive as a services company of sorts. After all, stuff like BBM is what caused them to really take off.
Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#16Slightly misleading title. BlackBerry has assembled a group to look at all future options- including a sale. Seems more likely they'll partner with someone. Or maybe sell off just their hardware business. I think BB as a whole isn't going away just yet.
I think the most likely endgame is that they'll pull a Nokia: either an outright MSFT purchase or becoming a heavily-subsidized client state. * Microsoft still has plenty of cash, but is facing an existential crisis of losing platform relevance * Their overall mobile marketshare is so low that they can probably throw that cash around with much antitrust attention * They've had a hard time attracting hardware makers o…
I highly doubt that MS will be the party to bite. BB uses a customized QnX that is about as far away from Windows Phone as you could probably go without doing something really exotic.
If that were their route they'd have to drop their investment in QnX, try to adapt all BB software to run under the latest incarnation of Windows Phone rather than to just run Windows Phone on it. BB users are quite particular about their handsets & associated software, much more so than Nokia users ever were.
Of course this could be totally wrong but I think the challenges in moving BB to Windows Phone are far more substantial than to get Nokia to convert even if BB is a smaller player.
Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#17They (or the company that buys them) should license BB10 to others. Like Microsoft does with windows mobile... It's the only path I can see for the blackberry OS to survive. Otherwise they'll be utterly crushed.
The problem is Blackberry is a hardware manufacturer, so they'd need a huge volume of sales in software to make up what they would lose in hardware.
That said, BB10 doesn't really offer anything compelling above Android for manufactures, and additional hardware isn't going to massively change their market share. BB customers have never been driven by cutting edge phones. Their application marketplace is so bad that there's no reason for general consumers to want to buy into the platform.
They definitely wouldn't survive a transition to a software company.
Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#18Canonical should buy them. It would give them a platform for their Ubuntu OS on phones, instead of trying to use crowd-funding.
Introducing the Ubuntu Edge: The world's first triple booting phone, with Ubuntu OS, Android, and BlackBerry 10. That would be awesome.
Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#19Canonical should buy them. It would give them a platform for their Ubuntu OS on phones, instead of trying to use crowd-funding.
Don't taunt me with such a wonderful fantasy. Blackberry/Ubuntu is just about the only thing that would make me drop Android.
Microsoft has always been a good fit for taking over Blackberry, but MS and BB have diverged too far.
Google might just pull another Motorola move and buy them up to add to their patent portfolio.
Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
#20They (or the company that buys them) should license BB10 to others. Like Microsoft does with windows mobile... It's the only path I can see for the blackberry OS to survive. Otherwise they'll be utterly crushed.
The problem is Blackberry is a hardware manufacturer, so they'd need a huge volume of sales in software to make up what they would lose in hardware. That said, BB10 doesn't really offer anything compelling above Android for manufactures, and additional hardware isn't going to massively change their market share. BB customers have never been driven by cutting edge phones. Their application marketplace is so bad that t…
So BB10 is dead then? ... He's dead, Jim. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yXqU-w9U0]