
BlackBerry puts itself up for sale - uladzislau
http://theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/blackberry-says-it-is-exploring-strategic-alternatives/article13708618/
======
HorizonXP
As an Android developer by day, and a BlackBerry developer by night, it
boggles my mind why everyone thinks BB10 is crap, and that no one wants it.

Spend 1 week with a BlackBerry Z10 or Q10, and you'll see how great it
actually is in comparison to other platforms. Spend some time developing an
app for it in Qt and Cascades, and you'll see how great it is to develop for,
in comparison to other platforms.

People also need to realize that this isn't RIM; that company was big,
sluggish, and full of idiots running it. BlackBerry is a much different
company now. They're very humbled, and willing to listen to their customers
and developers. As an example, I was looking at their Bluetooth APIs a few
months ago, trying to figure out how to do out-of-band (OOB) pairing for a
client. The APIs existed, but they were marked internal-use-only. I contacted
their developer relations team, who put me in touch with the engineers so I
could explain my use case. They said they'd review it and let me know. Lo and
behold, in the new 10.2 beta SDK, those APIs are now available for all
developers to use. It's one anecdotal example, but talk to others in the
community and you'll hear many more like it.

~~~
grannyg00se
BB10 may be nice but the damn thing still lacks apps. There's no point having
a great phone and great OS with no app coverage.

At least three times now in the past month someone has recommended an app to
me an sure enough...no blackberry option. Android and iOS only.

What I don't understand is why they don't _force_ popular apps onto their
platform. Even if no companies are jumping to develop for Blackberry, pay them
to do it. Get them onto your platform with no cost on their end. Pay for
ongoing support if necessary. App coverage is absolutely crucial and at this
point, with BB10 being what it is, I'd say app coverage is now the #1 problem
for their phones.

They've gone pretty far down the crap slide now. Maybe they've given up.

~~~
HorizonXP
They have tried to pay companies for apps, and they have in the past. It isn't
enough. My company is an example, as are others.

~~~
grannyg00se
You mean they try to pay companies to develop apps for their platform and the
companies refuse? Why would that be? Can you provide details about what
happened with your company?

~~~
sirkneeland
I don't know the exact situations behind HorizonXP's company and their
refusal, but having worked in devrel on two minority platforms, I can share
with you some common reasons:

-[small companies] even if you bought them a developer, it would impede their ability to be agile and pivot and iterate as they try to find something that works. It's hard enough to get them to support Android in addition to iOS, but getting them to support WP or BB10 is even harder

-[big companies] don't need the money. Or would ask for outrageous fees (some companies have asked for north of $20 million, even for faddish apps)

-[big companies] have an existing solution to do cross-platform development for iOS and Android and it's not worth it to redo it to add WP/BB support

-[small companies] complete lack of familiarity with the Microsoft stack.

-pressure from Apple or Google (usually Apple). I've had cases where a company gets favorable placement in the app store or in a commercial, or placement on the demo devices in a retail store and planned Windows ports are put "on ice" because they don't want to jeopardize their relationship with Apple (which of course has reserved the right to be as capricious and arbitrary with its app policies as they like)

-personal dislike. Believe it or not, some companies are run by people who just have a personal dislike of BlackBerry or Microsoft that is so strong that they'd rather spite them than add to their customer base. It's incredibly immature, but nothing we can do about it.

------
untog
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.

~~~
bodyfour
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 other than Nokia. If Nokia stumbles further, the whole phone platform could unravel.

* The traditional Blackberry market was enterprises, who probably would be a lot more receptive to the "windows everywhere" story than Nokia's customers ever were. Blackberry's original killer feature was arguably MS Exchange integration.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
bodyfour
> If that were their route they'd have to drop their investment in QnX

Just as Nokia had to drop their investment in Symbian and Maemo

> BB users are quite particular about their handsets

However they're not particular about BB10 (the QNX one you mention) since most
of them aren't even running it. If anything, the fact that they're in the
middle of a delicate platform shift makes the parallels with Nokia in 2011 all
the more striking.

Anyway, its all just idle speculation on my part.

~~~
tanzam75
Nokia is getting $250 million each quarter from Microsoft, minus the price of
the OS licenses, minus the foregone revenue from supplying Nokia Maps for free
to non-Nokia Windows Phones.

With 7.4 million Lumias sold last quarter, at $25 per Windows Phone license,
Nokia is drawing just $70 million each quarter from Microsoft. At 10 million
units, they'd start paying Microsoft money.

Blackberry sold 6.8 million units last quarter. They have no maps to license
to Microsoft. If they signed an agreement with Microsoft tomorrow, it'd still
take several months for the first handset to come out. What would Blackberry
be worth to Microsoft in a year?

The numbers are not in Blackberry's favor. That having been said, I will never
underestimate Steve Ballmer's ability to overpay for a deal.

------
cjoh
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 billions.

~~~
jcampbell1
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.

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

~~~
cmart
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

~~~
lifeisstillgood
But he is saying the $5bn _already_ includes a discount for the cash you will
get back. The market knows it has 3bn in cash lying around, so the market
reckons that all of Blackberry's future profits and its on hand cash, are
worth $8bn today, but that includes the $3bn of cash, so it adjusts the shares
down to be $5bn - effectively saying the market thinks Blackberry can generate
another $5bn worth of dividend-able profit for the rest of its life. For a
company with an EBITDA of 1.3bn thats about 3 years.

~~~
foobarqux
What is the market cap of a lemonade stand with 3bn cash?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Err, ok I am missing something from my basic economics - I was pretty certain
the market cap of a company was its projected lifetime profits.

So if a lemonade stand has 3bn in cash it's done pretty well selling lemonade
surely?

~~~
foobarqux
> Err, ok I am missing something from my basic economics - I was pretty
> certain the market cap of a company was its projected lifetime profits.

No, it is what the shareholder can, in principle, "take out" of the company,
appropriately discounted. For a going concern, without excess cash, that is
going to be, to a first approximation, something like discounted earnings.

> So if a lemonade stand has 3bn in cash it's done pretty well selling
> lemonade surely?

Not necessarily. When starting a business you need cash, even pre-revenue.
Even if the cash were generated entirely from the business somehow the
business endeavor may no longer be valuable. Maybe people don't like lemonade
anymore. Maybe lemons have gone extinct. In those cases future earnings are
zero.

If someone wanted to acquire the lemonade business what would they pay?
Probably not $3bn because that would just be moving numbers around (there is
no reason normally to buy cash). They would pay whatever they could get out of
the lemonade business proper (assets, future earnings). The $3bn would be
returned to the shareholders.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I've just reread my comment - I was talking rubbish. Sorry

------
mncv89
Canonical should buy them. It would give them a platform for their Ubuntu OS
on phones, instead of trying to use crowd-funding.

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

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

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

------
GrinningFool
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 withdrawal from the board due to
conflict of interest - this may hint at Fairfax's direct involvement in sale
or other negotations around taking the company private.

In any case, I hope it works out well. With the QNX-based BB10 OS they've
caught up to and in some ways surpassed the competition, particularly with
recent and upcoming updates.

The problem they face is three-fold: the competition is now too firmly
entrenched, making it extremely difficult to get consumer and developer
mindshare.

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.

Finally, there is a lot of carrier antipathy in the US market. Carriers are
doing virtually no supportive marketing, and updates that have rolled out
internationally in July won't be out in the US until late September.

Competition is heating up in the low-margin areas outside of the US that have
typically bolstered their sales.

Their future is looking pretty uncertain (and I say this as someone who
develops BB apps) - a manufacturing or licensing deal could provide them with
what they need to keep going.

~~~
bane
> 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.

------
bane
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.

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

~~~
seabrookmx
> Already runs Android apps.

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

~~~
HorizonXP
That's about to change with the release of 10.2 this September. It supports
Android 4.2.2 APIs, and runs them pretty well.

~~~
foobarqux
Do they support an Android app store? Do they need to be sideloaded?

~~~
HorizonXP
Android apps need to be packaged into a .BAR file (simple tool) and signed
with a BlackBerry signing key so it can be submitted to BlackBerry World.
There is no Google Play, or Amazon App Store, or any other Android-specific
app store.

If you don't want to submit to BlackBerry World, you would need to sideload
the app. You still need to sign it with a BlackBerry key.

------
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...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2077067/Amazon-
looked-buying-BlackBerry-maker-RIM-summer.html)

Neither MSFT nor Samsung really make sense as purchasers IMHO.

~~~
jfb
The hardware business is dead and dusted. Amazon needs a platform to sell you
things, not a difficult hardware business. Blackberry's only useful assets are
their enterprise software and sales teams; everything else is noise.

~~~
dredmorbius
And patent portfolio.

Depending on where Amazon wants to take Kindle, that could be useful.

~~~
jfb
True. And it's not like Amazon doesn't have the money to splash around.

~~~
dannomatic
Amazon is already in the hardware business and it is far from dead and dusted.
Sorry to disagree. The Kindle Fire is a significant component in their
business, it's currently running on Android, BB10 is an excellent OS +
platform. Makes sense to buy BBRY, port to Kindle, disjoin from one of your
biggest competitors and keep or eject the remaining pieces of BBRY hardware
available on a case by case basis. The Q10 is a nice piece of hardware and
BB10 is a great platform.

It's a natural fit and like I mentioned above Amazon was quite interested 18
months ago, I doubt much there has changed except the fact that the market cap
for BBRY has fallen since then, making it an even more attractive asset to
Amazon.

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jacquesm
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.

~~~
pilgrim689
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!

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
justincormack
More likely to sell it or spin it out. A buyer could open source it though.

------
fnordfnordfnord
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 conspicuous deal out of getting "lawful access" to those servers.

Then, there were a few widely reported reputation damaging service outages.

Then, they became unable to design and manufacture a new phone, despite years
of experience making Blackberry phones.

Given the surveillance controversy, BB ought to be "killing it" as some say,
except that new BB10 devices are more like BB branded commodity smartphones,
the data is no longer encrypted en-route, and the cost for "secure email" has
gone up dramatically, and is licensed separately where it used to be a built-
in feature.

/tinfoil

~~~
jacquesm
RIM is Canadian isn't it?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Yes.

------
gummify
This sucks for Canada. Less than five years ago RIM/BlackBerry's share prices
were trading at ~$150, now it's $10! I can see this depressing Canadian start-
ups and its tech industry. Like Kodak, the main reasons for BB's downfall was
their own human mistakes - complacency, hubris, and arrogance.

~~~
sirkneeland
Actually if you look at the Nokia example, quite the opposite can happen. A
large, prominent, "national champion" company absorbs a huge amount of talent.
As Nokia has downsized thousands of workers, they released thousands of
entrepreneurs and engineers into the Finnish startup ecosystem. It's exciting
times in Helsinki nowadays. The same could happen in Waterloo, and in Canada
as a whole.

------
fingerprinter
Man, the long sad story of RIM/Blackberry. They should learn something from
Samsung, and Samsung should heed the history of RIM.

Blackberry made good hardware with terrible, terrible software. Samsung, so
far, has focused on hardware and left the software to other people. It has
allowed Samsung to focus on their core expertise and grow fast.

However, there is always the rumor that Samsung is building Tizen internally.
This, IMO, would be a huge mistake. Samsung should focus on phones and leave
the software to other people (Android, Ubuntu).

Realistically, I think Blackberry could do the same if they focused on their
hardware and the enterprise market. If there was a high-riser who was shooting
for something in Blackberry, they should be talking to Canonical _right now_
and focus on making Ubuntu enterprise ready on their hardware. They could
dominate that market for years.

------
AlexanderDhoore
They (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.

~~~
CaveTech
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.

~~~
jfb
The reason their customers buy them has nothing to do with the hardware and
everything to do with BBM. The only way out for them is as a service provider
on alternate (Android, Windows, iOS) platforms.

Going private may enable them to continue to do this; any purchaser that makes
sense (Microsoft) would be buying their customer list and the BBM brand. Dell
buying them would be a Palm goes to HP level farce.

~~~
sirkneeland
As a victim of the HP/Palm fiasco, I would give Dell the benefit of the doubt
only because it is hard to imagine that they could match HP in the colossal
screwup and destruction of a great product.

------
rdl
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.)

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

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

2) 2048 < 256

3) ∅

~~~
sigkill
I got a chuckle because your answer is technically correct although it doesn't
help anyone who doesn't know what ECC already is. Nerd!

------
general_failure
Yahoo is placing a bid.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

~~~
btian
This is not reddit. Please stick to facts.

------
kin
Is Blackberry synonymous with RIM (Research In Motion)?

~~~
toyg
RIM changed their name to Blackberry last year.

------
parfe
I predict blackberry drops the hardware side and moves to a services company
supporting Android and iOS.

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alexeisadeski3
Every publicly traded company is always up for sale.

------
beefxq
Microsoft should buy them.

~~~
gummify
I think Huawei would bid.

~~~
beefxq
US Government would block the bid on spying grounds, oh the irony.

Takes one to know one I guess.

------
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!

