[anon(5818411)]

I'm starting to think it wasn't a smart thing to say on Chen's part to say that comment about Whatsapp sold for $19 billion and that he would do it to.

That's all everyone is talking about everywhere, ohh well all good CEOs make mistakes lol

[anon(5818411)]

These figures are all exaggerated, because the only people who really have the figures have an incentive to exaggerate.

Until these services offer calls to land lines (either free or for a fee) for me, Skype is going to be my main chat app, and all my friends and family have it, it supports voice calls and video calls and text messages and file transfers and also does calls to landlines... but Skype is not stable, the call quality is spotty, the BB10 app is not native and it's only the most resent version on BB10 that is even usable... but if Skype ever "gets it right" on BB10, I probably won't see much need for any other chat programs... or, if BBM has a Windows Desktop app and adds voice calls to land lines / cell phones, it's BuhBye skype for me (and everyone who lets me near their computers).

So, BlackBerry, get on that desktop clients for all major OSes (Win / Mac / Linux) and add "BBM calls to phone lines & mobiles" subscription service and you win.

BBM network technology is superior to Skypes, and so there is still an opportunity to win on features and quality.

GO BlackBerry! (that is to say: do whatever it takes to bring this to fruition in as short a time as possible, and don't let your silly ideas of "strategy" get in the way. DO IT FAST.)

I think they should integrate BBM into Link which would help for security. Just like OneDrive has that chat feature on the right and it works pretty good with all your files in the same spot. Bring Video to everyone and they are set.

[Edward in Toronto]

You do realize that they are posting these 'shock journalism' articles to attract page hits. They can make lots of cash from the ads that show up on the page every time someone views. But to make a lot, they need a lot of views of the ad.

And you're helping them.

[Omnitech]

I'm starting to think it wasn't a smart thing to say on Chen's part to say that comment about Whatsapp sold for $19 billion and that he would do it to.

That's all everyone is talking about everywhere, ohh well all good CEOs make mistakes lol

Why would that be a mistake?

If the CEO of BlackBerry were offered an opportunity to sell BBM for anything approaching that kind of money, if he did NOT do it, he would have shareholder lawsuits filed against the company until the cows came home.

The fact that people took that as some kind of claim that BBM should be worth that much is not only dumb, I'd say it's a deliberate attempt to dig up some far-fetched nonsense by someone who is trying too hard to malign the company and its management.

[nicky devriese]

blackberry is one of the most manipulated stocks in the world
manipulation ok but here they try to kill blackberry,i am from Belgium,yesterday i wanted to comment on the item apple entering the car market,well i tried to post 2 times( something about qnx),on hln.be(they refused to show my comment and it is not the first time) . In a quality paper like the standaard it is now 18 times in a row a negative article,last time they even forgot to mention the Z3 was out in Barcelona,all the others were mentioned VERY FRUSTRATING

[THBW]

I saw those, but that doesn't tell us how long they were active. I forgot the wording they used, but I remember there being a little bit of spin there.

You also realize 40M new users is at best $200M in new value, if we're being extremely generous. The stock has gone up by more than $200M.

Until they publish number of messages per day or number of active users per day, it's hard to say whether BBM is growing or not. I think the author is not correct in assuming it's shrinking. But, on the other hand, if messages per day were growing significantly I would think we'd have heard about it?


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So let me get this straight, new BBM users are valued at 5 dollars but those on whatsapp at 39 dollars. Ok, got it.

[madman0141]

There was once standards to being an Analyst but now there are thousands of make believe business news outlets. They hire so called Analysts who are business journalist because they post on twitter.

[app_Developer]

So let me get this straight, new BBM users are valued at 5 dollars but those on whatsapp at 39 dollars. Ok, got it.

Because it's definitely not linear when comparing a small base to a much larger one.

Why do you think it would be linear?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Omnitech]

Because it's definitely not linear when comparing a small base to a much larger one.

Why do you think it would be linear?

Yeah, they just paid more for WhatsApp than Facebook's entire valuation at the time of FB's IPO.

No biggie.

[clickitykeys]

The fact that people took that as some kind of claim that BBM should be worth that much is not only dumb, I'd say it's a deliberate attempt to dig up some far-fetched nonsense by someone who is trying too hard to malign the company and its management.

Exactly this. Concise and accurate.

[app_Developer]

Yeah, they just paid more for WhatsApp than Facebook's entire valuation at the time of FB's IPO.

No biggie.

Oh, I think FB did overpay. But that only supports the point that 80M active users on BBM does not justify such a big increase as we've seen in BB's value, right? There arent many Facebooks out there, and 80M users is probably not that attractive to them. Especially since 80M is not a huge increase from say a year ago.

And the smaller the network, the less value there is per user.

And again, the main revenue generators for the company are still falling apart. It's hard to see why investors would think that BBM or QNX suddenly make up for the loss of handset revenue.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[blackberrywinner]

heres a clean and informed link

[OMGitworks]

So let me get this straight, new BBM users are valued at 5 dollars but those on whatsapp at 39 dollars. Ok, got it.

Glad its starting to make sense. Seriously,1 company is 2.5-3 times larger and growing 9-10 times faster. Shouldn't their users be worth much more? It makes total sense in economic terms. Out of whack in the aggregate but in a comparison it makes sense.

[Omnitech]

Oh, I think FB did overpay. But that only supports the point that 80M active users on BBM does not justify such a big increase as we've seen in BB's value, right?

What is this "big increase" you refer to?

From the looks of it, BBRY's stock price has increased hardly a dollar since then, and that timeframe includes various important and well-received announcements at Mobile World Congress, various high-profile matters like Chen's face-off with T-Mobile etc, and to top it all off the market as a whole is up slightly over that timeframe anyway.

[app_Developer]

What is this "big increase" you refer to?

From the looks of it, BBRY's stock price has increased hardly a dollar since then, and that timeframe includes various important and well-received announcements at Mobile World Congress, various high-profile matters like Chen's face-off with T-Mobile etc, and to top it all off the market as a whole is up slightly over that timeframe anyway.

BBRY was up 15% in the few days after the WhatsApp acquisition and *before* the MWC announcements. In fact, the MWC announcement hasn't affected the stock nearly as much, has it?

You don't agree that 15% in less than a week is a big increase?


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[Omnitech]

You don't agree that 15% in less than a week is a big increase?

In my limited experience as I am not much of finance expert, BBRY stock is extremely volatile. It is constantly bouncing up/down, up/down, up/down.

There is a sheep effect (see this article for example), and there appear to be all sorts of speculative entities involved with BBRY stock, and then there is the simple fact that a lot of people just don't know the company very well and they can't get an accurate fix on them.

So we get one article that claims they are ready to sign a deal with Ford, and the stock jumps way up, then 2 days later someone at Ford refutes that and it tanks again, and then we hear that Apple in fact is making a deal with Ford and some other auto manufacturers and that takes the wind out of the sails too, then someone else comes along and does some actual research and discovers that in fact QNX probably underlies the Apple system and the stock perks up again. Over and over and over. Like a roller coaster.

[app_Developer]

In my limited experience as I am not much of finance expert, BBRY stock is extremely volatile. It is constantly bouncing up/down, up/down, up/down.

There is a sheep effect (see this article for example), and there appear to be all sorts of speculative entities involved with BBRY stock, and then there is the simple fact that a lot of people just don't know the company very well and they can't get an accurate fix on them.

This is exactly the point that the writer on SA was making. The value of the company went up by more than half a billion dollars after the whatsapp acquisition. This doesn't make a lot of sense as the company's major revenue source continues to erode quickly. Even the Ford deal, if it happens, would be a tiny amount of revenue compared to the collapse in handset sales.

So what the author was saying is that recent run up in the stock isn't actually justified by revenue or profit growth, or even the real prospect of either of these. I would add this is likely to be corrected with the next ER.



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[Omnitech]

So what the author was saying is that recent run up in the stock isn't actually justified by revenue or profit growth, or even the real prospect of either of these.

Tell that to all the idiots that bid the hell out of companies that are losing money by the truckload for years. In fact, I don't think Facebook was in the black until last year, maybe. Same thing with Twitter. In fact, I don't think WhatsApp was making money either. Yet people are constantly throwing money at these companies, in the hopes that some day, they might actually be cash-flow positive.

And FB and Twitter are the ones that actually have promise. They are far outnumbered by the ones that get money thrown at them hand-over-fist and never go anywhere.

[app_Developer]

Tell that to all the idiots that bid the hell out of companies that are losing money by the truckload for years. In fact, I don't think Facebook was in the black until last year, maybe. Same thing with Twitter. In fact, I don't think WhatsApp was making money either. Yet people are constantly throwing money at these companies, in the hopes that some day, they might actually be cash-flow positive.

And FB and Twitter are the ones that actually have promise. They are far outnumbered by the ones that get money thrown at them hand-over-fist and never go anywhere.

Yes, FB and Twitter have potential, which is why investors like them. WhatsApp doesn't have to be cash positive any more than the Android team or the Nest team have to be cash positive. All 3 are valuable because they feed their parent companies data and eyeballs. That's what FB bought, data and eyeballs. They also absorbed one of the strongest competitors to their own messaging service. I still think they overpaid, but I guess the timing was just right for whatsapp.



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[BigAl_BB9900]

heres a clean and informed link

Interesting arguments for going long on BlackBerry - but never heard of Investary Group before and cannot find information re: size of it's funds under management - wonder if it is a one man band!

[iN8ter]

He's partially right. The most recent run-up in BBRY valuation is in-part due to BBM. The fact that 1. FB bought what's app for a ship load of money. 2. The fact that Chen said he would take the same amount of money to sell BBM. 3. Now it is an absolute horse race to see who can figure out how to monetize these cross-platform messengers. If What's App, a non-monetized app is worth that much, BBM must be worth almost as much, and if BBM can figure out how to make some money with it....

Unfortunately the article writer may have had a really intense workout this morning and released some long stored THC from fatty cells. The author may not have realized he was stoned at the time he wrote this. Or, he just might not have been very bright.

Things are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. Microsoft paid 8.5B for Skype, which many people thought was ludicrous. Facebook paid 1B for Instagram, which many people thought was ludicrous. Google paid almost that much for Waze, which made a lot of people laugh. Then the 19B WhatsApp deal.

WhatsApp is a market leader at this point. BBM is not. That's why Facebook was bullish in that purchase. Same for their Instagram purchase, and the same goes for Microsoft's Skype purchase (Skype has far more MAU than BBM does, and is being tactfully leveraged in a number of prolific products, like Windows desktop OS).

Facebook didn't buy WhatsApp to monetize it. Facebook bought WhatsApp to leverage it and control the mobile messaging market.

Whoever buys BBM for 19B won't be in any different of a situation than Blackberry is in right now. They will inheret the same challenges. Any pressure that WhatsApp had to show profits has been decreased significantly because now they have a rich backer to balance things out for them when needed, similar to Instagram, Skype, Waze, and others.

BBM could be worth as much as Twitter if they had gone cross platform back in 09/2010, which would have completely stunted the growth potential of services like WhatsApp. WhatsApp got to where it was because companies like Blackberry held their jewelry box far too tight, and didn't capitalize on the mobile boom when they should have.

[iN8ter]

Yeah, they just paid more for WhatsApp than Facebook's entire valuation at the time of FB's IPO.

No biggie.

WhatsApp basically is the Facebook of Mobile Messaging.

[iN8ter]

Tell that to all the idiots that bid the hell out of companies that are losing money by the truckload for years. In fact, I don't think Facebook was in the black until last year, maybe. Same thing with Twitter. In fact, I don't think WhatsApp was making money either. Yet people are constantly throwing money at these companies, in the hopes that some day, they might actually be cash-flow positive.

And FB and Twitter are the ones that actually have promise. They are far outnumbered by the ones that get money thrown at them hand-over-fist and never go anywhere.

The Start-Ups are typically the companies that innovate. This is why they are funded. No one is forcing anyone to throw money at them.

WhatsApp was innovative. They developed basically a Mobile Messaging service that worked as easily as SMS/MMS and proliferated it on every platform they could get their hands on.

Companies like YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, Waze and Skype were innovative. Nik Software (makers of Snapseed, purchased by Google). Even Instagram and Path. That's why these startups (like Path, who hasn't been acquired by anyone - yet) are funded. A lot of innovative things come out of these companies, and then they are either Acquired, Acqui-Hired, Get Big-Famous-Super Profitable, or die off and see their innovations integrated into the established leading solutions and the cycle starts over again.

Innovation isn't always free. Progression isn't always free. There is money in these things. It's called Patents and Patent Licensing, Selling the Company, etc. Even a failed start-up can end up being a revenue source for someone due to IP and other factors.

When companies grow bigger, they tend to lose agility. When companies go public, they become slaves to shareholders instead of their own ideas and ambitions. Innovation often takes a back seat to Profit Generation. This is why Blackberry tried to go Private, remember? It's why Dell went private.