[Corbu]

https://blog.bbm.com/2016/09/29/bbm-...o-indonesians/
By Matthew Talbot
BBM Game Center to Bring Localized Games to Indonesians

[morganplus8]

Morgan, does the volatility in software bother you? Do you think JC is slowly levelling it out, hopefully with a plan to get to a billion dollar software company (excl. SAF) in a year or 2?
Posted via CB10

Hi _dimi_,

Some great posts there, thanks. I'm not worried at all, John Chen is 7 months into this Fiscal year, he feels they will achieve 30% organic growth going forward, they have an amazing Gross Margin of 81%, the average or expected sector growth rate is 11% and MOBL is burning cash like crazy at that level while BlackBerry is highly profitable, Good accounted for only $ 160 MM of the projected nearly $ 700 MM for this FY, the list goes on! There isn't a day when we aren't hearing about breaches in security and all of this is non-Internet-of-Things (the sector is huge and going), BlackBerry is absorbing plenty of S,G&A plus Interest expense as they consolidate and downside the business model, still, the numbers are amazing.

Then there is BBM, it is carrying its own, something that no one saw coming. We have Radar, they took in $ 500 M on 500 vehicles, how many trucks, containers, planes, trains, automobiles, vans are there in the world? This could be huge for BlackBerry and it looks to be a simple operation to run on its own.

None of these potential windfalls are being discussed on this thread.

Some of us like to spend our time knocking Chen for not explaining the changes to HW going forward, well here is the initial news release and it has been clear to me what he is doing in HW:

"Our new Mobility Solutions strategy is showing signs of momentum, including our first major device software licensing agreement with a telecom joint venture in Indonesia. Under this strategy, we are focusing on software development, including security and applications. The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners. This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital," continued Chen.

"We remain on track to deliver 30 percent revenue growth in software and services for the full fiscal year. We are revising upward our non-GAAP EPS outlook to a range of breakeven to a five cent loss, compared to the current consensus of a 15 cent loss. This reflects increased confidence based on improving margins and reduced interest expense from the recent refinancing of our debt, as well as planned investments in growth areas."

These statements are the very first thing to greet us on Wednesday morning and still the media got it wrong. I can't wait for the media to use up their long standing headlines of "BlackBerry's HW demise", if they want to take that approach, fine, it isn't material or correct, BlackBerry will still be selling phones for some time to come. Getting out of the phone business means selling off the assets to others, they have told us 6 different ways that there will be no sale of those assets. They just launched a phone, they licensed to only one country, there is another phone in the works, let's sit back and see how things evolve here. If I own a construction company with $ 2 MM in hardware and I decide not to sell that HW, I'm still in the business. Chen has intellectual assets, and until he sells them off, he is in that business.

Getting back to your question, to me at least, Chen stated in his press release that, "Our new Mobility Solutions strategy is showing signs of momentum ......." there is nothing in that statement that suggests things are maturing in mobility and/or software.

I think it was a very good report, the media has been waiting for years to use a headline that BlackBerry is out of handsets, they got their day as weak as it was, now let's get back to reality here.

[Corbu]

BlackBerry brand won?t go missing from smartphone market: COO | IT Business

Despite BlackBerry Ltd. retreating from designing and making its own hardware, it’s possible that BlackBerry-branded devices will be more effectively delivered to market than in recent years, according to Ralph Pini, chief operating officer and general manager for devices at BlackBerry.

BlackBerry’s new hardware strategy is two-fold, Pini told ITBusiness.ca in an interview on Friday. One prong is to explore partnerships like the one with Indonesia’s BB Merah Putih, the country’s largest device manufacturer, to increase BlackBerry’s presence in areas of the world it hasn’t accessed previously. The second prong is to evolve existing partnerships to promote the BlackBerry brand on a global scale, serving regions like EMEA and North America.

While Pini said these partnerships aren’t likely to be made with tier one OEMs, he says BlackBerry could be better off with tier two or three OEMs than it has been in pushing its own devices to market.

“We haven’t had the capital to really promote these products… With our partners that will change,” he says. “We’re leveraging the scale of some of these partners around the globe… these partners are looking to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.”

After years of seeing its devices revenue decline and handset market share shrink, BlackBerry announced its exit from the hardware business on Wednesday. BlackBerry CEO John Chen said it will move to a royalty-based model where partners design and make BlackBerry-branded handsets, then take them to market.

Despite a strong effort with the Priv, an Android-based device that combined a touch screen with a security-boosted OS and an extendable physical keyboard, BlackBerry’s hardware revenues have continued to decline.

“When the Priv bounced, that was an indication there was a serious problem,” says Rob Enderle, an IT analyst based in Bend, Ore. “The Priv was by all measurements the phone they should have built to counter the iPhone threat, but it just came too late.”

As it has done with the Priv and the DTEK50 smartphones, BlackBerry’s version of Android features additional security software, a productivity suite around messaging and calendar tools, and a commitment to deliver patches as fast as Google releases them, to minimize the risk of zero-day threats.

For Enderle, BlackBerry’s brand is a strong security solution on Android, and builds on the firm’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), which is “one of the strongest platforms in managing phones.”

Pini says that BlackBerry will remain “very active” in helping its partners make BlackBerry devices, with a process built into agreements to ensure quality. BlackBerry will also send members of its own team to work on location with partners to help them meet the brand’s requirements.

“This will enable BlackBerry to bring back the brand of our devices and reenergize some of our legacy capabilities that we’re known for,” he says. “We’re now able to use that capital and apply it in a different way. The hardware design is becoming somewhat of a commodity, it’s pretty much all the same.”

The move also doesn’t mean the death of BlackBerry 10, Pini says. BlackBerry is currently working towards its 10.3.3 release for existing devices and the OS could even see new life in the future.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see the software in another device,” he says. “But I couldn’t tell you when or where.”

In the near-term, BlackBerry will be focusing on transitioning from its current hardware approach, passing the torch to its partners. It plans to make announcements soon about partnerships that will see BlackBerry devices distributed globally.

As for the possible announcement of a sequel to the DTEK50, possibly branded as the DTEK60?

“Stay tuned,” Pini says.

[W Hoa]

Not sure of the source but the comment is interesting:

[world traveler and former ceo]

Not sure of the source but the comment is interesting:

Indeed! Great find!! That would be a huge win for BlackBerry

Further elaboration of my "wow"!

1. "BlackBerry in final stages to license to China"

2. "BB10 has a fully mature OS that... can own or license"

3. "Now that Blackberry is phasing out of BB10, BlackBerry could license it to China..."

4. "BlackBerry... the new BlackBerry.. that is licensing to Singapore, China, and India, too"

If CEO Chen can pull this off, ...."wow"...huge win win.



Posted via CB10

[Corbu]

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/blackb...ing-disappear/
BlackBerry’s Not Going to Disappear

“IF YOU’RE A product guy, you obviously always want to…” Ralph Pini trails off. He’s BlackBerry’s product guy. Specifically, he’s the company’s COO and General Manager of Devices. And since BlackBerry no longer designs or makes its own devices, it’s a hard sentence to finish.

“Product guys are product guys,” he says.

Early Wednesday morning, BlackBerry CEO John Chen announced as part of a routine quarterly earnings report that the company was out of the smartphone game. “The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners,” said Chen in a prepared statement. And with that, the company responsible for some of the most iconic phones of the last 15 years bowed out.

The reasons for BlackBerry’s hardware decline have been well-documented, and besides, it’s ultimately just one reason. It collided with a giant, iPhone-shaped iceberg. From here, BlackBerry’s going to focus primarily on its software business, which makes sense. Software has been profitable for the company, to the tune of $29 million just last quarter. Hardware lost $8 million in the same three-month period. It doesn’t exactly take an applied mathematics degree to understand the move.

BlackBerry phones aren’t disappearing altogether, though. At least not for a while. They’ll just be made by other hardware companies. In fact, they already are.

Third-Party People

In July, BlackBerry announced the DTEK 50. Billed as “the world’s most secure Android smartphone,” it’s a device of confusing provenance. You know how the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire? The DTEK 50 hardware isn’t BlackBerry hardware. Or, at its core, BlackBerry software either.

Instead, the body was made by Alcatel, while the brains are Android, modified to include the end-to-end security solution that amounts to BlackBerry’s best pitch in an increasingly crowded mobile space. This is what the future of BlackBerry looks like: Modified software powering a third-party host, trading on a name that, the hope is, still holds some juice.

“The strategy has been in the works for some time,” says Pini, who notes that BlackBerry has already scored a major licensing deal in Indonesia, a market where it still has plenty of clout.

And while a $300 Android smartphone and the Indonesian market seem to indicate a focus on the lower end of the pricing spectrum—especially given the difficulties BlackBerry had moving units of the Priv, its $650 Android-based flagship—Pini says that shouldn’t be taken to mean that BlackBerry suddenly means entry-level. The goal, at least, is to dish out a full range of devices. As many, anyway, as there are partners looking for a more established brand to piggyback off of.

“Some might be premium products, some might be unique products that represent the BlackBerry brand, like with a keyboard,” says Pini. “The objective is to be able to offer the market an alternative from a software point of view, an end to end secure platform.”

BlackBerry will continue to release monthly security patches for all branded devices, and enable powerful features, like monitoring apps for suspicious activity.

That sounds awfully appealing, especially in our era of post-Snowden security awareness. Then again, BlackBerry devices have done this for a while, without managing to sell. Which raises the question: How will the future be any different from the downwardly spiraling past?

Repeating History

It’s a crowded Android market. In fact, it’s two markets. There’s the slim premium space occupied by the Samsung Galaxy line, and a low-to-mid range area that Chinese manufacturers like OnePlus fight over.

“In theory, BlackBerry might have been able to carve out a third segment focused on secure enterprise devices,” says Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research. “But the combination of its lateness to the market and the strides made in this field by Samsung in recent years basically precluded that outcome.”
No one’s more aware of BlackBerry’s failure to sell smartphones than BlackBerry. And no one has more insight the key cause of that failure.

“Going back two years ago, the company has been going through some significant restructuring at all levels,” says Pini. “To really win at devices, you need capital to really promote products from a marketing point of view. Even if you have great products, if you don’t have the capital to promote them, it’s difficult to win against very tough competition.”

Whether the Priv could be considered a “great” product is debatable; it had its issues. But the root problem seems clear: BlackBerry has had limited resources to allocate, and chose to put what it had toward figuring out what comes after hardware. That means the enterprise software that BlackBerry licenses to everyone from Samsung to Salesforce, but also its Android-hybrid for consumers and businesses alike.

At the very least, hitching a ride in other company’s devices beats the alternative of disappearing from the market altogether. This way BlackBerry gets to pocket licensing fees without having to deal with any of the manufacturing and supply chain headaches that come with one’s own hardware operation. It can specify quality standards for anything with the BlackBerry name, without having to shell out money on marketing. It’s significantly less risk, with at least some reward left over.

“We had a heavy investment to create the Android offering,” says Pini. “That was a lot of effort, and probably took away resources from being able to effectively participate in the general market.”

Now that it’s done, though, it can reap licensing fees while other companies fight in the trenches. Companies like Alcatel, one of the low-cost Chinese manufacturers that squeezed BlackBerry out of the market in the first place.

Onward and… Onward

That’s the rosy scenario. It’s the one that assumes the BlackBerry brand is still in international demand, and that its software isn’t just secure, it’s by now also refined.

Pini’s confident about what’s in the pipeline, and says he’s seen specifically strong demand from second and third-tier players, some of whom are even lining up to put BlackBerry’s own BB10 platform in their phones. He says BlackBerry will maintain a portfolio in the hyper-competitive US market as well.

The worry, though, isn’t so much whether BlackBerry will dilute its brand by depending on third parties. It’s how much brand BlackBerry has left, compounded by the material impact of leaving the hardware business behind.

“There’s still tons of corporate overhead, and BlackBerry has been deriving nearly a third of its revenue from hardware even in recent quarters, so there will be a big chunk of revenue that goes away as it abandons selling its own hardware,” says Dawson. “That’s going to put even more pressure on the software business.”

Whatever the uncertain future, as far as Pini’s concerned, the important thing is that BlackBerry’s still in the game, at least in a sense. He’s a product guy, after all.

“It’s a good compromise to still be able to be out there,” says Pini. “Some people might have some mixed feelings, but the compromise is actually a good compromise.”

[_dimi_]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...infrastructure

BlackBerry Services just crossed the 500 thousand downloads mark. Next up should be BBM, to cross the 500 million mark that is!

Posted via CB10

[W Hoa]

Some post earnings ratings:

10/2/2016 MKM Partners Reiterated Rating Neutral $7.50 -> $8.00
9/30/2016 TD Securities Reiterated Rating Buy $9.00 -> $10.00
9/30/2016 Canaccord Genuity Reiterated Rating Hold $8.00
9/30/2016 Imperial Capital Boost Price Target In -> In-Line $7.00 -> $8.50
9/29/2016 RBC Capital Markets Boost Price Target Underperform -> Neutral $7.00 -> $7.50
9/29/2016 Macquarie Upgrade Underperform -> Neutral $7.00 -> $8.50
9/29/2016 Royal Bank Of Canada Boost Price Target Sector Perform $7.00 -> $7.50
9/29/2016 Morgan Stanley Reiterated Rating Equal Weight $7.00

[Bacon Munchers]

It's a repeat of the BlackBerry show.

... one kid was trying to get into a car, and everytime the kid got close, the car moved and the kid couldn't get in.

... Like a fat kid chasing a rolling doughnut.
Hey guys! Just saying howdy. I have been a closet lurker here and there, and will be taking the majority of December off for a much needed holiday, so I will spam the thread more then(!)

Thanks a bunch to the regular suspects for their kind contributions.

Oh, I have been seeing a ton of Leap BlackBerry units with a large healthcare provider I deal with in Vancouver, so that is a good sign of Canadian support.

Well, I'll kick the cat upside down, then it's off to church.

[DaSchwantz]

Whoa, wait a second, did Pini just say in that Wired article there were second and third tier players wanting to load BB10 onto their phones!?

Posted via CB10

[cjcampbell]

Whoa, wait a second, did Pini just say in that Wired article there were second and third tier players wanting to load BB10 onto their phones!?

Posted via CB10

I think it might be the BlackBerry skinned android, but could be wrong. BlackBerry handles the software, patches, and updates so they don't need to invest in that aspect of the business. Since they already, most likely, make handsets for others, the risk in hardware becomes minimal.


Posted via CB10

Edit - I didn't see that apparently it has been said that some are lining up for BB10. I find that odd as they've been open to the option for a while now. Maybe they've reduced the licencing cost due to not making any more of their own.

[Corbu]

masterful, morganplus8, rarsen and 2 others like this.

[world traveler and former ceo]

Whoa, wait a second, did Pini just say in that Wired article there were second and third tier players wanting to load BB10 onto their phones!?

Posted via CB10

Yep.. that's what he said "some"...

Posted via CB10

[cgk]

The direct quote about that is:

The move also doesn’t mean the death of BlackBerry 10, Pini says. BlackBerry is currently working towards its 10.3.3 release for existing devices and the OS could even see new life in the future.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see the software in another device,” he says. “But I couldn’t tell you when or where.”

BlackBerry brand won?t go missing from smartphone market: COO | IT Business

[Corbu]

BlackBerry bets big on enterprise mobility in Africa - Memeburn

[world traveler and former ceo]

The direct quote about that is:



BlackBerry brand won?t go missing from smartphone market: COO | IT Business

"Pini�s confident about what�s in the pipeline, and says he�s seen specifically strong demand from second and third-tier players, some of whom are even lining up to put BlackBerry�s own BB10 platform in their phones. He says BlackBerry will maintain a portfolio in the hyper-competitive US market as well."
... WIRED article quote

Posted via CB10

[masterful]

"Pini�s confident about what�s in the pipeline, and says he�s seen specifically strong demand from second and third-tier players, some of whom are even lining up to put BlackBerry�s own BB10 platform in their phones. He says BlackBerry will maintain a portfolio in the hyper-competitive US market as well."
... WIRED article quote

Posted via CB10

So who is it that is so interested in having bb10 os onto their phone? Hmm...

Posted via my BlackBerry PRIV

[Corbu]

John Chen Verified account ‏@JohnChen
To win this month entries must feature use cases of #BlackBerry’s Security leadership or Software in business

Last edited by Corbu; 10-03-16 at 08:28 AM.

Mr BBRY, morganplus8, rarsen and 2 others like this.

[kadakn01]

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-pate...ing-tyler-vpn/

VRX (Virnetx) is a company that is entirely IP and thus the appeal ( 1st VRX won, then Apple appealed, and then VRX sued for a retrial!) Interesting as it relates to BBRY IP.

Posted on my Priv

[Corbu]

BlackBerry?s tough, smart call
Waterloo Region Record

[Corbu]

BlackBerry and the Lesson That the Technology Market Fails to Learn
By Rob Enderle

[rarsen]

OT from Related Technologies, seeing such language on that product makes for a change. Life is not always an easy walk in the park out there:

'Piece of crap': Apple hit with proposed class action lawsuits over iPhone 'touch disease'
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/pi...090000778.html

[bbjdog]

The future of BlackBerry devices


http://blogs.blackberry.com/2016/10/...berry-devices/

[Corbu]

Interesting:
Emtek eyes wider Indonesian role for BlackBerry Messenger- Nikkei Asian Review

BlackBerry's decision to put BBM into Indonesian hands may prove a wise one. Shinta Dhanuwardoyo, head of digital business at the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is cautiously optimistic about BBM's competitive prospects in the country, in part because of its popularity with small companies as a marketing platform.

"Despite its waning popularity among middle-class and upper-class consumers, BBM is still signing up new daily active users in the middle and lower [class] segments," she said. "Given the right execution and strategy, this is a great opportunity for Emtek to lead an all-in-one platform like what WeChat did in China."

[bspence87]

Interesting:
Emtek eyes wider Indonesian role for BlackBerry Messenger- Nikkei Asian Review

Bittersweet article
Good to see potential from BBM, but disappointing that BlackBerry couldn't pull this off by themselves. It seems so simple!

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android