As referenced here the long running shareholder suit over alleged misleading results in relation to the BB10 operating software was given new life by a judge and will proceed. While this will not bring back the software it will inevitably re-expose the missteps and foibles of the RIM era management team.
BlackBerry must face revived U.S. lawsuit over BlackBerry 10 - Business Insider
Some here have stated that the misrepresentation with BB10 started at the very beginning, that BlackBerry's founders knew that they had missed the boat. That in the end they weren't going to be compitivie long term and that BB10 was an attempt at protecting short term value to allow them to "get out". Kinda a stretch maybe...
Even though all the bad actors are gone, I hope this suit moves forward (and honestly I hope Blackberry loses, especially is those in charge deceived the public and shareholders).
My main reason is because I would LOVE to see some actual sales and returns numbers.
I would like to see the underlying information as well. We, most likely, know the general reasons but more detail would be good.
Posted via CB10
I wonder if Microsoft and Canonical are next in line to face a lawsuit over missing the boat with DOA Windows Phone and Ubuntu Touch resp.
Posted via CB10 using my amazing Passport (OG Red) <3
I don't see this going anywhere, but then again, it is a NY court.
The issue that the lawsuit brings up is not that BB10 did poorly, it's that the leadership gave intentionally misleading statements about BB10's performance in the marketplace even after having information to the contrary. The DECEPTION (if they can prove deception) is the problem.
Did MS or Canonical release deceptive statements about their platforms?
It seems to rely on one retailer's numbers. Since it's apparently going forward, the real global picture will be revealed. This could get interesting.
A lot of statements that came out of the mouths of BlackBerry management back in 2011, 2012 and 2013 was flat out lies and deception. You literally had the Co-Ceo's giving out different information to investors and clients both on press conferences and media events.
There was forward looking statements saying that BlackBerry 10 was going to launch for sure in "early 2012" and than in December 2011 a few months after launching BB7 phones, they announced a delay in BlackBerry 10 until end of 2012 due to a "chipset" issue.
Come the summer of 2012 and than we have Heins in charge and he than delays BlackBerry 10 until early 2013 because the software, services and "billions of lines of code" needed to put into the system to put onto the devices or whatever.
We had Balsille telling investors and media that the Playbook would be launching with a massive software update to address the email concerns within 60 days of launch in April 2011 which we all know, didn't occur until almost a year later. We had him than tell the Financial Post and other media that BlackBerry was going to announce something that would "leapfrog everyone in mobile" for what I believe was the BlackBerry conference every fall. This was suppose to be BlackBerry 10, for release in early 2012.
I do think that the issues that plagued BlackBerry back than was also the fact that the CEO's were not honest with each other towards the end. They alluded to lack of trust in the situation and being let down by each other in their quotes during the writing of "Losing the Signal" BlackBerry book.
When corporate executives make statements to media and to investors during earnings call that vary wildly on a literal week to week basis, something stinks and it could be full out fraud. There is no way that nobody in the company knew that Playbook was going to be delayed and than BlackBerry 10 Was going to be delayed multiple times. Each and every time they made statements that people trusted and than literally weeks later, the statements changed. The Safe Harbour provisions of forward looking statements I don't believe cover this type of garbage.
I am a long term shareholder who's finally in the black after years of the company's lackluster returns. I am also a long term fan but a lot of the crap that went on back than was in my personal opinion, illegal and misrepresent shareholders in a big way.
Sorry about the long rant!
Posted via CB10
It's cool! I can dig the sentiments. Problem is proving they were intentional lies, and not the misstatements of out of touch, optimistic CEO's.
I think they were optimistic estimates. People would have sued BlackBerry if they had come out and said BB10 is a bust right after the Z10 came out and not given it a chance. They would have said the company hurt the chances of success and all that.
Maybe they would have stemmed the bleeding earlier on, but then people would have been ticked off for them spending so many billions on an OS that they tanked weeks after its release.
If this suit wins, Elon better start to worry because he's been more grandiose than anything BlackBerry ever said. Again, is it intentional or is it optimistic?
I don't think the suit has much merit and I lost about a third of my investment in the bloodbath of the June 2013 quarterly report.
Posted via CB10
At this point, I think judge is just letting plaintiff to be heard as part of some procedural issue that will be a moot point if case moves forward now. Probably won't get very far because as I've said before, the corporate structure with two CEOs, the way BB10 was genuinely developed and the management behavior after termination and then hiring of Heins makes proving anything difficult. The former CEOs have been very good at keeping mouths shut except what they control, like the book publishing and mediocre bid to purchase BlackBerry.
Depends, if discovery proves that Thor lied to investors about the return rate for BB10 this could be a problem. Also if discovery shows that there were major internal concerns about product quality the investors may have a case. To go from gung ho to trying to sell and then almost break up the company in less than six months does not add up. If I had invested in BlackBerry in early 2013 based on Thors statements, I would Assume the statements made to investors were minimum misleading at worse complete fabrications. Then again I did not invest and I had little faith in BB10 turning around BlackBerry.
So true. And we all know how that turned out when it happened to HP after buying Palm, tanking the HP Touchpad with webOS 3.0 not long after its release and after spending lots of money on promoting it and after various media events showing off all of their crazy plans for webOS computers and whatnot. Their stock value took a huge hit. That was part of the reason they got rid of Leo as CEO. But it took some time for them to recover from all of the damage to their image. So good thing BlackBerry didn't go down that same sad road and actually gave BB10 a chance.
Posted via CB10 using my amazing Passport (OG Red)
For HP, Palm was a minor division. For BlackBerry.... Smartphone was their whole company.
Sad that they both ended up with TCL Communications....
I know (I'm a former webOS user!), but it still did damage their image, which could've happened to BB as well, which is why the example is still valid.
What Palm should have been for BlackBerry... and it's investors, is a wake up call as to how hard it would be to get developer support for BB10. Many of us wondered what would be the difference between supporting the PlayBook and supporting the new phones. In a way the PlayBook was BlackBerry's Palm moment. But they wrote it off and moved on and didn't take any lessons away from it. And neither did some investors....
I agree that the PlayBook should have been the pivoting moment for RIM. At that point they should have realized there were some hard questions to answer and decisions to be made in regards in how to fix BB10 and address customers CTQ's. Instead they operated in a vacuum still thinking that security and BIS would win the day.
Posted via CB10