1. ominaxe's Avatar
    I have a serious question. Before I ask and rant, forgive me for any naivety. I'm not a businessman, but honestly, I don't think you need to be a businessman to understand how backwards business can seem at times.

    How can a company fail? Why can't they be sustainable?

    Seriously. If a company has a following, a good product, the resources... what is keeping them from staying afloat and doing what the people want and need? On that note, why does Apple need to look elsewhere (cars) when they see some decrease in sales? Why must a company continue to grow?

    I'm not saying that BlackBerry will fail completely, I understand they have enough patents and the wherewithall to keep them in the software/management game ala IBM, but I have come to terms with the fact that their OS will no longer be upgrading and that their handset market is non existent on BlackBerry 10 and dwindling on Android.

    As applications begin losing compatibility I'm starting to realize I will never have another new BlackBerry BB10 phone. And little by little I'm wondering what will be available for me in the future. Looking at Jolla I'm thinking that might be the most logical place to go whenever my phone or BB10 can no longer meet my needs (hopefully never).

    As I look at Jolla the question keeps popping up. Why can Jolla succeed and BlackBerry fail? Jolla keeps pushing out updates and improving on their OS while BlackBerry is just updating their current software until it's eventually dies. I understand that Jolla is a smaller and more manageable company, but what's keeping BlackBerry from doing the same? They even have more resources than Jolla. Why can't BlackBerry stay at the size required to just deal with what they need to deal with? I would surmise it has to do with confidence and the market or whatever, but I think that's just BS. I just wish BlackBerry (and Jolla, Windows, Ubuntu) could just happily share a small percentage together. I wish that BlackBerry could keep making phones and keep improving their OS.. but they're failing.. and I just don't understand why they need to.
    02-16-16 09:01 PM
  2. Troy Tiscareno's Avatar
    There's no good reason to assume that Jolla is going to survive, and they've never turned a penny of profit. They're a small company that's been running on investor money - investors who hope to get in on the ground floor of something that eventually becomes big, so they'll make a big return. But they knew (or should have known) going in that it was a high-risk investment, with a much-better-than-even chance of failing and losing every penny of the investment. But the theoretical potential has been enough to attract some money.

    Still, Jolla started out trying to be both a hardware and software company, but has already failed to deliver promised hardware (and may or may not be able to refund people who didn't get the hardware they bought), and has left the hardware business. They hope to make a go of it by simply licensing the OS to other hardware manufacturers - and while that cuts initial costs and got them another round of investment money to keep going, it's FAR from certain that this is a viable business model in a world where Android and WinPhone are virtually free to license - why would someone pay to license Sailfish?

    Well, the Turing Phone people apparently have done just that - and did so without even asking their investors first - so we'll see if that phone ever even ships, much less turns a profit. In order to actually be successful, though, it will need to do much more than ship 100k devices.

    There's still a chance that Google might decide to sue Jolla, or be more aggressive about blocking non-Google-Certified phones from accessing Google Play (which would hurt BB10 as well), which illustrates the danger of trying to build a platform on top of someone else's ecosystem.

    To answer your original question - BB and Jolla are simply in two very different places in their business cycle. Jolla is a start-up, and start-ups aren't expected to be profitable in their first couple of years. The hope is always that they'll release successful, profitable products, eventually leading to going public, allowing the initial investors to cash out and make a bunch of money for risking their original investment money. What actually happens is that, far more often, that initial investment is burned through with no profitable product, and the money is written off and the company goes bankrupt. Startups fail at a rate of about 15 to 1 success.

    BB is a mature company that was once at the top of its market and has been on a long downslope for 5 straight years. Few investors believe that BB is a company that has potential to make a big increase in profits, and they're already public (their main monetizing event has already happened), so everyone knows how bad they are doing. Mike and Jim and others who were early in on the company made their multi-millions and have moved on.
    ominaxe, JeepBB, web99 and 4 others like this.
    02-16-16 09:38 PM
  3. qwerty4ever's Avatar
    Shareholders demand continuous growth so that their investment becomes more valuable. It is simply greed. Institutional "investors" are at the root of this avarice. BlackBerry has sufficient cash reserves to deliberately tank its own stock price but the company does not have the market share to weather the inevitable storm of lawsuits that would likely be initiated. The company would have been better off if it had remained privately held. The company needs a sociopath at the helm at the moment. John Chen is merely Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

    BlackBerry Priv with CrackBerry App for Android
    ominaxe likes this.
    02-16-16 11:19 PM
  4. Troy Tiscareno's Avatar
    Shareholders demand continuous growth so that their investment becomes more valuable. It is simply greed.
    Yes. It is this "greed" that motivates people to give strangers a LOT of their own money as investments in the first place, allowing those strangers to start businesses and develop new products and technologies. Without "greedy investors", we wouldn't have smartphones to talk about.
    bakron1, JeepBB and app_Developer like this.
    02-17-16 08:30 AM
  5. bakron1's Avatar
    Yes. It is this "greed" that motivates people to give strangers a LOT of their own money as investments in the first place, allowing those strangers to start businesses and develop new products and technologies. Without "greedy investors", we wouldn't have smartphones to talk about.
    It's called basic business concepts 101 and without investors with capital who are willing to take the risk required to successfully manufacturer and/or design a product the consumer will buy. Well, small business and the corporate sector for that matter would not exist as we know it.

    It's funny when I hear folks call investors greedy because they expect a return on their investment for taking the risk, the tune always changes when the person(s) complaining money is at risk!! Food for thought.
    02-18-16 05:32 PM
  6. ominaxe's Avatar
    I think it becomes greedy when a group of individuals desire more growth than a company needs or is capable of.
    Last edited by ominaxe; 02-20-16 at 10:08 AM.
    02-20-16 07:51 AM
  7. Troy Tiscareno's Avatar
    I think it becomes greedy when a group of individuals desire more growth than a company needs or is capable of.
    BB "greedliy" borrowed $1.25 billion. Investors "greedily" expect to make money on that loan. Crazy, right?
    JeepBB, Jerry A and eldricho like this.
    02-20-16 11:21 AM
  8. sentimentGX4's Avatar
    On that note, why does Apple need to look elsewhere (cars) when they see some decrease in sales? Why must a company continue to grow?
    Apple isn't expanding its product portfolio because of declining revenue. The goal of every company is always to make as much money as possible.

    Why? Because the company is owned by shareholders who expect their shares to increase in value over time. In order for the shares to gain value, the company must earn more money. Shareholders elect a Board of Directors to represent them and the Board of Directors have the final say with regards to everything in the company. They are the bosses. They hire the CEO (Cook) and they can fire the CEO on a whim.

    Shareholders demand continuous growth so that their investment becomes more valuable. It is simply greed. Institutional "investors" are at the root of this avarice.
    "Institutional investors" is a nebulous term often portrayed as a big, evil entity; but, ultimately, all "institutions" have a source to their wealth and it always leads back to actual people.

    The World Bank claims the US stock market has a total market capitalization of ~$26 trillion and the US Federal Reserve states retirement/pension funds have ~24.5 trillion in assets (obviously not all in the US stock market).
    Last edited by sentimentGX4; 02-20-16 at 12:03 PM.
    app_Developer likes this.
    02-20-16 11:28 AM
  9. ominaxe's Avatar
    BB "greedliy" borrowed $1.25 billion. Investors "greedily" expect to make money on that loan. Crazy, right?
    I wasn't talking about BlackBerry in this case. Just business practice in general.
    02-21-16 03:02 AM
  10. Prem WatsApp's Avatar
    BB "greedliy" borrowed $1.25 billion. Investors "greedily" expect to make money on that loan. Crazy, right?
    Prem, haha... :-)

    �   There's a Crack in the Berry right now...   �
    02-24-16 03:44 PM
  11. Dave Bourque's Avatar
    It's only greed when business people think infinite growth is possible. It's not.

    Z30STA100-5/10.3.2.2876
    02-24-16 04:55 PM
  12. app_Developer's Avatar
    I think it becomes greedy when a group of individuals desire more growth than a company needs or is capable of.
    Let's look at Watsa as an example. He's invested billions in this company (much more than just the $1.25B debenture). That's not all his own money, he's invested billions of his investors money into this as well. Those investments in many cases are retirement/pension funds and the like.

    At the very least he would want to see BB grow to the point that his investors are even. You would agree with at least that much, right? They've lost a lot of money on this company, and many should be asking why Watsa made such a huge bet in an industry that he flat out doesn't understand. So there is real pressure on Watsa here and that pressure transfers to the guy he hired, Chen.
    02-24-16 06:15 PM
  13. Prem WatsApp's Avatar
    It's only greed when business people think infinite growth is possible. It's not.

    Z30STA100-5/10.3.2.2876
    That's why you need to stake your claim now... ;-D

    �   There's a Crack in the Berry right now...   �
    03-01-16 04:24 PM

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