Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 115 posts

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#31

Post by bane »

GrinningFool wrote: post #26

Not quite. They've announced they've formed a committee to explore strategic options: sale, partnerships, licensing (and by extension, taking themselves private). The thing that isn't reported here is that they announced the same thing in early 2012 -- though it is the first time they've explicitly mentioned sale, and they now have one specific bank representing them. Also of possible interest is Prem Watsa's withdra…

> This is compounded by (and in large part caused by) the fact that they waited so long - their legacy BB OS has rendered them largely irrelevant to most people, and that's a huge hurdle to overcome.

BB users are also a strange lot. The ones I know at least tend to be very conservative about their equipment choice. Hauling around 6 or 7 year old BBs because newer ones move the icons around or they don't like the keyboards or what have you. They want exactly the experience they have right now and nothing else. I've known a half dozen who bought and returned both Androids and iPhones (trying to get with modernity a little) pretty much because they weren't BBs...or at least all of their problems with the other two phones were why this or that wasn't like it was on their BB.

This has been a very big problem for Blackberry. They invest in finally modernizing and updating their hardware and software, but everybody who's not already a BB user has moved on, and the ones who've remained don't want the new stuff because it's not just exactly what they already have.

Their only chance would have been to capture the non-conservative parts of the market before they left years ago. That boat set sail long ago.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#32

Post by bane »

cjoh wrote: post #8

At 5 billion dollars of market cap, the company's worth less than what Microsoft paid for Skype. Frankly, Apple or Google should make this purchase just for their federal salesforce alone -- Blackberry knows how to do something those other companies don't do well and that's sell and entrench inside of Governments. That alone is worth billions. Give the iPhone to a Blackberry federal salesperson, and you've got billio…

> Apple or Google should make this purchase just for their federal salesforce alone...

That wouldn't be a good reason for Apple to buy BB, it'd be a money losing proposition for them. The Feds have already moved on to Android phones and reversing that would take years.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#33

Post by anonymoushn »

bane wrote: post #28

Probably worth buying for the patents, sales channels and manufacturing bits. Cut most of software dev and turn them into an Android phone maker...maybe specialize on low powered, ultra long battery life phones of something.

Please no, BB10 is superior to Android and already runs Android apps.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#34

Post by jacquesm »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #30

Does anyone else suspect that Blackberry/RIM's troubles might be something along the lines of what has happened to LavaBit? Wasn't their device/architecture similar to LavaBit's at least in that comm's were sent encrypted to a server either controlled by RIM, or by a third party (individual companies, gov't agencies, etc.) Then, some time in the not-too-distant past, various world governments started making a big con…

RIM is Canadian isn't it?

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#35

Post by pilgrim689 »

jacquesm wrote: post #9

I really hope they'll do a spin-out of QnX and/or open source it under a license that allows forking. That would be a major move.

QNX is a huge asset to the company, raking it customers worldwide in the embedded/real-time/safety-critical software markets. Open sourcing QNX would be a major move, as in a major loss, indeed!

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#36

Post by noct »

mncv89 wrote: post #14

Canonical should buy them. It would give them a platform for their Ubuntu OS on phones, instead of trying to use crowd-funding.

Canonical has a revenue measured in millions, BlackBerry in billions.

Reality aside, it would also make them owners of QNX.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#37

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #30

Does anyone else suspect that Blackberry/RIM's troubles might be something along the lines of what has happened to LavaBit? Wasn't their device/architecture similar to LavaBit's at least in that comm's were sent encrypted to a server either controlled by RIM, or by a third party (individual companies, gov't agencies, etc.) Then, some time in the not-too-distant past, various world governments started making a big con…

RIM is Canadian isn't it?

Yes.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#39

Post by jcampbell1 »

cjoh wrote: post #8

At 5 billion dollars of market cap, the company's worth less than what Microsoft paid for Skype. Frankly, Apple or Google should make this purchase just for their federal salesforce alone -- Blackberry knows how to do something those other companies don't do well and that's sell and entrench inside of Governments. That alone is worth billions. Give the iPhone to a Blackberry federal salesperson, and you've got billio…

From an acquisition perspective, the "price" is Market Cap + Debt - Cash. The total cost comes to just over $2B. At that price, I see it as a no brainer for Microsoft. They just need to ship a windows phone that is compatible with all the BB enterprise stuff, and IT departments will force it on the employees.
Post reply on HN