41–50 of 115 posts
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…
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!
Slightly 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
If QnX is not an asset to the buyer because for instance, they already have an OS offering of their own this might just happen to pacify the various users out there (corporate, governmental). At least like that they could be relieved of the support burden of maintaining two OS's.
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…
Plus, BB10 is pretty great as an OS, and has the best and most efficient multi-tasking system from what I've noticed (stuff can run in the background without a big hit on battery life, and the transition between apps is very smooth).
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.
For the good of humanity, I hope someone reasonable (Google?) buys the ex-Certicom ECC patents and opens them up (free, ideally, but genuinely easy to license would be ok.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
One of the most intriguing Windows Phone handsets that I saw when WP7 first hit the market was Dell's Venue Pro [1]. It very much seemed like a Microsoft response to the Blackberry market. I was surprised when it sold so poorly and was dropped without much fanfare. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Venue_Pro
Now that Android phones with physical keyboards are becoming extinct perhaps Windows Phone could carve itself a new niche if Microsoft urged its phone manufacturers to ship devices with QWERTY. One thing I found lacking in Windows Phone 7 was the experience of entering text on the on-screen keyboard, especially in languages other than US English [1]. This is a a pity because WP doesn't support alternative input methods (e.g., Swype), however, a physical keyboard would more than make up for it.
[1] See, e.g., http://forums.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-8/225491-windows-p.... Note that the forum post is about version 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.
I understand where you're coming from, and Microsoft may well come to decide that their best strategy is in-house hardware, but there's a major downside to such a move.
