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BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#51

Post by cjoh »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #24
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…

This was true maybe ten years ago, but even the US government is now moving away from Blackberry: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/rim-suffers-fresh-blow-... "Research In Motion (RIM) has suffered yet another setback as the General Services Administration (GSA), the US government’s main procurement agency, announced its decision to provide iPhones and Android devices to its employees. Though BlackBerrys will stil…

Right. That's basically because employees (I used to work for the gov) want them, much to the CIO's dismay because the CIO is being better served by Blackberry sales folks than Apple's or Google's. By better served, I don't mean "taken out for golf," I mean "contracting vehicles have been set up by BlackBerry's experienced salesforce that makes this IT easy for a CIO to purchase." The SBA and many other agencies just renewed their blackberry contracts because, frankly, it was just easier for them to buy it. If you put an iPhone or an Android device into that existing framework for purchasing, it's game, set, match.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#53

Post by cmart »

keltex wrote: post #47
jcampbell1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not true. The market cap which is the value of all outstanding shares. Debt and cash are factored into the market cap.

His point is that the company has a net cash position of $3bn, meaning someone who pays $5bn for the entire market cap of the company would immediately receive $3bn back in cash, making the real price effectively $2bn

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#54

Post by rdl »

troymc wrote: post #48
rdl wrote: post #43

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.)

What is ECC, why is it important, and what does Blackberry currently do with their associated patents?

1) y^2 = x^3 + ax + b

2) 2048 3) ∅

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#55

Post by mtgx »

noct wrote: post #36
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.

Something really cool could come out of Ubuntu Touch and QNX if they could open source it.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#57

Post by seabrookmx »

anonymoushn wrote: post #33
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.

> Already runs Android apps.

Not well. They're sluggish, and no features past Gingerbread are supported.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#58

Post by megablast »

simonh wrote: post #50
jcampbell1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slight problem there. If MS does this Nokia will drop Windows Phone like a hot stone, so in the gap between Nokia abandoning it because they won't want to compete directly with MS, and MS actually getting their own BB engineered phone out (likely to be several years), WP would have zero market presence. Surface has already royally pissed off MS laptop and tablet OEMs. This move would critically sour their relationshi…

Where will Nokia go? To Android, owned by Google who also owns Motorola?

If MS did buy Nokia, they would make a guarantee to Nokia, just as Google did.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#59

Post by dannomatic »

Amazon and Blackberry are the ideal fit. Amazon needs to gain independence from Android, they have the marketplace and the muscle to take advantage of all things Blackberry has in it's favour.

Remember they have already been in discussions in the past: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2077067/Amazo...

Neither MSFT nor Samsung really make sense as purchasers IMHO.

Re: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

#60

Post by thenewway »

As a Blackberry Z10 owner (who has also owned several generations of iPhones and Nokia's Lumia 920) I think BlackBerry needs to stick it out. The Z10 has a great OS. The touchscreen gestures are ingenious. The Hub (where the email and notifications are) is a fresh innovation.

The device in general is well thought out.

Also important to note that the Z10 has privacy and encryption features no other phone I know of has.

Blackberry has something good, and while Google and Microsoft continue to hemorrhage users because of trust violations, BlackBerry can win back market share. It can happen!

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