[Corbu]

https://www.bnn.ca/video/what-john-c...-group~1348735

What John Chen has accomplished with BlackBerry was thought to be impossible: Enderle Group

BlackBerry CEO John Chen was awarded a five-year extension on his contract with the company. The turnaround artist has overhauled a once hardware company into a software and services company, something that many people thought impossible. Rob Enderle, president at Enderle Group said Chen did, in fact, do the impossible, and is certainly deserving of his contract renewal.

[W Hoa]

BlackBerry vs. Facebook: Why David Will Beat Goliath

Should this, or any future litigation, convince a critical mass of people, or a government, that Facebook is an unapologetic IP thief, the resulting regulations, charges and taxes could eliminate Facebook’s ability to profitably function.

In short, depending on how public this dispute becomes and how aggressively BlackBerry fights in a public forum, Facebook could gain the image of a pirate, which would likely propagate additional litigation from other companies, private parties and governments.

https://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs...t-goliath.html

[world traveler and former ceo]

, MSN Money, Yahoo Finance)
BlackBerry was the target of a large decline in short interest in the month of February. As of February 28th, there was short interest totalling 42,454,549 shares, a decline of 6.3% from the February 15th total of 45,315,407 shares. Based on an average trading volume of 4,485,728 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 9.5 days.

Posted via CB10

[Corbu]

JC on BNN:
https://www.bnn.ca/video/blackberry-...ood-at~1349631
BlackBerry CEO: transformation based on what company was already good at

John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, joins BNN to talk about his contract extension and plans for the next five years.

[Corbu]

WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-t...rry-1521215499
What’s That Thing You’re Sending an Email With? Um, It’s a BlackBerry

March 16, 2018 11:51 a.m. ET

Magnus Jern was sitting around with some programmers at Google headquarters when he remembered he needed to answer an email. But when he pulled out his phone and started tapping, the room grew silent.

“What is that?” one woman asked.

The reaction was no surprise to Mr. Jern, part of a die-hard band devoted to a device that was once a status symbol, then was ubiquitous, and now is almost an endangered species: the BlackBerry.

After he explained it to the group in Mountain View, Calif.—“the younger people truly didn’t know what it was,” he says—some the older iPhone and Android users among them began to grow nostalgic, admitting they kind of missed the BlackBerry and its physical keyboard.

“There was agreement that for typing, in particular, it’s a better device,” says Mr. Jern, who works in Barcelona, Spain, for consulting firm Digital Management LLC. He also has an iPhone but finds its screen keyboard slow and frustrating. “For email and calendar, the two basic tasks, BlackBerry is the strongest.”

The BlackBerry began life as a text pager, created in 1996 by Canadian company Research in Motion Ltd. The founders made technical breakthroughs that popularized world-wide phone texting and mobile email. Its keyboard buttons looked a little like the kernels in a blackberry, hence the name.

It transformed the way people worked. Before, “when you got off an airplane, the first thing you did was head to a pay phone with a pile of quarters and stand there for 20 minutes with a broken pencil in your hand writing down all of your messages,” says Hugh MacKinnon, chairman of Canadian law firm Bennett Jones LLP . “Then, all of a sudden you had a BlackBerry, and all of your messages, all your voice mails, were right there in your hand.”

But in 2007 Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone, and Android smartphones, also with touch screens, came soon after. Unlike BlackBerry with its office focus, they aimed at the mass market.Today BlackBerry has a global smartphone market share of less than 1%. The Smithsonian records one in its National Museum of American History.

The diminished band of devotees must suffer for that devotion, as friends brandish other iPhone and Android devices loaded with top-of-the-line cameras and countless apps. At a rugby tournament in Vancouver in early March, Tim Powers, an Ottawa executive, says he was “chastised” for using his BlackBerry.

Standing near the field, he spotted actor Chris Hemsworth, known for his role as Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films.

“I was trying to get some pictures of Hemsworth with my BlackBerry, and people are laughing at me, saying ‘Oh, good luck with that, you can hardly get a picture on that thing,’” says Mr. Powers, who says his camera takes longer to get up and running than he’d like.

“They were right. I’ve got some great behind-the-head shots of Chris Hemsworth. BlackBerry doesn’t necessarily win when it comes to photos.”

Mr. Powers, vice chairman of Ottawa-based consulting firm Summa Strategies Canada Inc. and chairman of Rugby Canada, also faced ridicule when he tried to download the schedule for the tournament.

“Basically, every time I hauled it out, I was abused,” he says.

He is willing to bear these slings and arrows. The keyboard suits “an old rugby player with some beaten-up hands,” he says.

Also, “I am not gentle,” Mr. Powers says. “I almost feel like I could shoot it and it would still work.”

BlackBerrys, says Andrew Stivelman, a technical writer in Toronto, are “built like a tank.”

Mr. Stivelman bought his first one in 2003 and has owned almost every model since. His ardor has withstood a former employer’s policy prohibiting workers from using BlackBerrys because the CEO thought they were outdated.

“We had to turn them in and get iPhones,” says Mr. Stivelman. “That was upsetting to me. I took it personally.”

At his current employer, where he says he is the only person using a BlackBerry, Mr. Stivelman keeps quiet about it, afraid the IT folks will take it away because BlackBerry no longer provides monthly security updates for it.

“It’s not fair,” he says. “The phone works fine.”

Kady O’Malley was so happy with her BlackBerry she decided to honor it by giving the same name to her Boston terrier.

“I actually had the name before I had the dog,” says Ms. O’Malley, a journalist for Canadian news site iPolitics. “Happily it suited her very well.”

That was 10 years ago, in the heyday of BlackBerry, but she’s still happy with the devices, now using a model that runs an Android operating system with BlackBerry security software. She tags her emails with “sent from a phone with a real keyboard.”

Although the company, now named BlackBerry Ltd. , no longer makes the phones, they live on through licensing agreements with companies that make and sell BlackBerry-branded hardware with Android operating systems. BlackBerry Ltd. says it will support phones that use its own operating system until at least 2020.

Going against the grain, the Canadian government remains a steadfast supporter of the native-born device. Some 125,000 BlackBerrys are in use by government employees, compared with just 1,500 Android devices and 700 iPhones, according to the department that manages the government’s IT services.

A spokeswoman for BlackBerry, Sarah McKinney, said its software is still widely used by governments and businesses to handle email, calendars and other tasks on iPhone and Android devices. The company has refocused on its software, including driverless-car technology.

Meanwhile, fans of BlackBerrys wax lyrical about features like a curved shape that fits the hand, writing in forums such as “There’s magic in BlackBerry 10” on Crackberry.com . A bonus, wrote one person last year, is reduced theft risk, “because thieves don’t know what they are.”

Until recently, devotees could gain affirmation from a website called celebritiesblackberry.wordpress.com , showing sightings of users such as Kim Kardashian West, who tweeted in 2016 that her beloved BlackBerry Bold had died and she was looking for a new phone.

The last posting from the moderator is from August 2016:

Dear Guys,

I received tons of mails that ask me to update the blog with new posts.

Unfortunately, all the celebrities now own an iPhone, this is so sad.

And this comment:
Hands down, the best smart phone I have ever owned was the BlackBerry Passport. I own a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge right now, and while it is a quality product, I would have never gotten rid of the Passport, but I was the only one in my company still using a BB, and our IT folks were giving my too much flack. I truly believe that if BlackBerry were not already on the ropes by then, that the Passport would have been a huge seller. The reviews on them by unbiased users were stellar for a reason. It was actually funny to see young tech people review the Passport, and say how surprised they were by what an amazing phone it was. And so it goes.

[bbjdog]

WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-t...rry-1521215499
What’s That Thing You’re Sending an Email With? Um, It’s a BlackBerry

This sad story has been played over and over and over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

prop·a·gan·da
ˌpräpəˈɡandə/Submit
noun
1.
derogatory
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.


Cheers Corbu and all the best for Habs tomorrow.

[rarsen]

10. BLACKBERRY MOTION makes it to the list:

The 10 best smartphones of 2018 | ZDNet
"The BlackBerry Motion is a full touchscreen model with similar design features found in the BlackBerry KEYone. It packs a 2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset with a 650MHz Adreno 506 GPU and 4GB of RAM, a 5.5 inch 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD display, massive 4000 mAh battery to give you long battery life, 12 megapixel rear camera and 8 megapixel front camera, and microSD expansion card slot.

BlackBerry has been building a reputation for timely software and security updates, often releasing these updates just days after Google releases them to its Pixel line. BlackBerry Hub is also a very efficient communications tool to help you be more productive.

The BlackBerry Motion scored a solid 7.5/10 score in the full ZDNet review and is worth considering if you need a BlackBerry device to get your work done."

[anon(9100201)]

To guess the chances of BB winning against Facebook and its subsidiaries the following should be considered:

1. The case was transferred from Judge Dolly M. Gee to Judge George H. Wu for all further proceedings (https://www.pacermonitor.com/case/23...ook,_Inc_et_al) and Judge George H. Wu is participating in the Patent Pilo Programm (https://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/judges...-pilot-program)

2. Judge George H. Wu seems not to be very plaintiff friendly if they cannot proof that their patents are not only computer implementations of already existing abstract ideas since Judge George H. Wu would consider these patents invalid (https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content...ts-in-McRO.pdf).

3. The patents in our case are
7,372,961 - Method of public key generation
8,279,173 - User interface for selecting a photo tag
8,209,634 - Previewing a new event on a small screen device
8,301,713 - Handheld electronic device and associated method providing time data in a messaging environment
8,429,236 - Transmission of status updates responsive to status of recipient application
8,677,250 - System and method for switching between an instant messaging conversation and a game in progress
9,349,120 - System and method for silencing notifications for a message thread
8,031,170 - User interface for selecting a photo tag
7,970,849 - Handheld electronic device and associated method providing time data in a messaging environment
7,861,175 - IM contact list entry as a game in progress designate
(https://www.law360.com/cases/5a9ede71e90a247575000001)

So the hard question to answer to guess BlackBerry's chances of success is: are these patentes in question valid or are they just already existing abstract ideas that have been merely transformed by BlackBerry to comuputer language?

[W Hoa]

Judge George H. Wu seems not to be very plaintiff friendly

BlackBerry is seeking trial by jury so it may not matter.

[dalinxz]

BlackBerry is seeking trial by jury so it may not matter.

Would a jury trial be acceptable in this situation, considering the expert knowledge involved? Possibly for damages, but for the verdict?

[W Hoa]

Would a jury trial be acceptable in this situation, considering the expert knowledge involved? Possibly for damages, but for the verdict?

Good question. The judge would rule in matters of law and would make a determination on the validity of the patents. The jury would rule on matters of fact and would make a determination as to whether an infringement had taken place.

Given that BlackBerry submitted a 117 page document detailing their patents it would suggest that BlackBerry feels they have pretty solid case. Time will tell.

[W Hoa]

Facebook under fire after Canadian whistleblower reveals abuse of data of tens of millions of users

Politicians in the United States and Britain are threatening to haul Facebook executives, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, before legislative committees in the coming months, amid revelations about the private data of tens of millions of users being misused – beginning years ago – to fuel deeply polarizing political campaigns.

The political outcry erupted this weekend after a 28-year-old Canadian political consultant emerged as a whistle-blower.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...wylie-reveals/

[morganplus8]

Hi gang, thought I would try to post something to start off this week:



We enjoyed a substantial rally so far in March, thanks to the news about the Facebook challenge. Today, thanks to Trump, we are outside of that nice long channel that we enjoyed for this month. It's not a big deal but the 50-dma is currently at $ 12.72/shr and that's where we are with the DOW getting hammered not to mention the NAS. I would give us an "A" grade for holding up so well here today. Trump, please shut-up.

I find it hard to believe there we haven't heard from Chen in a very long time. That said, the news of Facebook is what I would call transformational as Chen has told us for years now that he wants BlackBerry to partner up with companies and to not just sue them for cash alone. I see this as a strong statement that BB has done its homework and sees a partnership with Facebook and many others. The sad news is that it takes a lawsuit to get the ball rolling sometimes. If this challenge results in a major positive for BB, and I think it will, we could see some names that no one has though possible, hit the list like Apple.

I see that the debate here has quickly turned toward the likelihood of BB succeeding in their case against this particular judge. In this case, you have to look at the State that the trial takes place in, their view on patent law and the resulting outcomes. To that end, BB has an excellent chance to gain a favourible ruling here. I also believe the fact that BB wants to settle their cases with partnerships doesn't hurt either. And finally, this is a huge problem for Facebook right now and they need to see this go away fast. In the eyes of Facebook, BB is this tiny little thorn that might be best to buy now and end the publicity ASAP. Do you want billions of shareholder value wiped out and terrible publicity or do you want to purchase an asset and make it all go away? Interesting times.

Just my thoughts of course!

[rarsen]

General information on penetration of Apple:

Apple macOS malware soared 270% in 2017 | IT PRO
Mac malware increased by 270% in 2017, compared to 2016, a report by MalwareBytes has revealed, with four new major Mac vulnerabilities uncovered in the first two months of 2018.

Grayshift's $15,000 GrayKey promises to unlock Apple iPhones | IT PRO
Researchers warned that while this was a boon for law enforcement if it falls into the wrong hands, it could still continue to work. “Such a device could fetch a high price on the black market, giving thieves the ability to unlock and resell stolen phones, as well as access to the high-value data on those phones,”

[W Hoa]

BlackBerry Furthers its Leadership in Securing the Enterprise of Things

Launches new software capabilities aimed at enterprise users, IT administrators, and developers

BlackBerry Furthers its Leadership in Securing the Enterprise of Things NYSE:BB

[W Hoa]

BlackBerry and Microsoft Partner to Empower the Mobile Workforce

Companies deliver seamless Mobile App experience and policy compliance; BlackBerry Secure platform now available on Azure

WATERLOO, Ontario and REDMOND, Wash., March 19, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BlackBerry Limited (NYSE:BB) (TSX:BB) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) today announced a strategic partnership to offer enterprises a solution that integrates BlackBerry’s expertise in mobility and security with Microsoft’s unmatched cloud and productivity products.

Through this partnership, the companies have collaborated on a first-of-its-kind solution: BlackBerry Enterprise BRIDGE. This technology provides a highly-secure way for their joint customers – the world’s largest banks, healthcare providers, law firms, and central governments – to seamlessly use native Microsoft mobile apps from within BlackBerry Dynamics.

http://globenewswire.com/news-releas...Workforce.html

[W Hoa]

I find it hard to believe there we haven't heard from Chen in a very long time.

Currently up 5.3% after hours

You couldn't have timed that request any better. Cheers

[Corbu]

BlackBerry Secure Adds New Software Capabilities Aimed at Enterprise Users, IT administrators, and Developers | Inside BlackBerry

[FeitaInc]

Hi Morgan. Fantastic to see a post from you again. a post-close rally in BB makes perfect sense given that you are back.

And finally, this is a huge problem for Facebook right now and they need to see this go away fast. In the eyes of Facebook, BB is this tiny little thorn that might be best to buy now and end the publicity ASAP. Do you want billions of shareholder value wiped out and terrible publicity or do you want to purchase an asset and make it all go away? Interesting times.

Are you suggesting that they pay up for a licensing deal (buy their silence) or buy BB altogether? this is just for clarity, as I would be beyond amazed if Fb bought BB. that said, the royalty advertising stream is facing strong headwinds from European law makers, who seems to not stand for the royalty play any more and are looking at taxing revenue at 3%.

[bbjdog]

News from the autonomous world.

"Volvo, the Swedish car brand owned by China’s Geely [GEELY.UL], confirmed its XC90 SUV was involved in the crash but said the software controlling the car was not its own."

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/mobile.r.../idUSKBN1GV296

[Corbu]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/19/blac...hone-apps.html
BlackBerry stock jumps after saying it will provide security for Microsoft Office phone apps

[rarsen]

More concerns for FB:

Facebook's marketing VP says the company is 'beyond disturbed' by data scandal
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/19/caro...ca-breach.html
"...company is "outraged and beyond disturbed" by the bombshell reports this weekend that firm Cambridge Analytica misused the data of 50 million people." In the wake of the revelations, media and users have criticized Facebook for being lax about securing user information and for its top executives' lack of leadership in publicly addressing the situation.

Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested data on 50 million Facebook profiles to help target voters
http://www.zdnet.com/article/faceboo...rump-campaign/
"A data analytics company that helped propel Donald Trump to election victory harvested private information from 50 million Facebook profiles without their permission."

[BigBadWulf]

"...company is "outraged and beyond disturbed"

Funny, considering it's their own dang fault. Handing over private data to people who claimed to be using it for educational purposes, smh. TG I've never trusted nor used their product!

Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested data on 50 million Facebook profiles to help target voters
http://www.zdnet.com/article/faceboo...rump-campaign/
"A data analytics company that helped propel Donald Trump to election victory harvested private information from 50 million Facebook profiles without their permission."

And then there's this:
Ex-Obama Campaign Director Drops Bombshell Claim on Facebook: 'They Were on Our Side'

[Corbu]

https://www.therecord.com/news-story...-company-says/
BlackBerry’s transition is complete, company says

[Corbu]

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bl...205519063.html
BlackBerry says new software bridge to Microsoft products will increase security