[JSmith422]

So what are BBRY shareholders expected to do about that? Risk billions more going after the small number of people who aren't comfortable with advertising based business models?

I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm suggesting with a properly structured subsidiary entity, Blackberry could monetize prior investment utilizing an existing under served marketplace through a relatively minimal investment.



Posted via CB10

[Emaderton3]

25 apps? What exactly do you need 25 apps for?

Posted via CB10

Why is this so unbelievable? If that's what his/her business needs, then so be it.

Posted via CB10

[markmall]

Where I work we have more than 25 apps for different functions of the business. There are very few jobs you can do well without using at least 1.

It would also be really hard to take a campus bus, or join a secure conference call.

I am not buying this, sorry. Most entities do these things over the internet. Maybe there also is an app, but cities or large universities running their own bus system post their data on the internet.

[Emaderton3]

I am not buying this, sorry. Most entities do these things over the internet. Maybe there also is an app, but cities or large universities running their own bus system post their data on the internet.

OK, then 24 lol.

Posted via CB10

[markmall]

They might be able to do so, but such a BB10 approach would result only in minimal upgrades over the years on the software side. So all updates would be like 10.3.3: yes, it's an update, but it brings almost nothing new.

Such an approach would bring nothing new, it would just be small updates over the years while every other OS moves truly forward in their own way.

How exactly are the other OS's "moving forward" that will set them above BB10? What features is BB10 missing now that would be expensive to develop? Part of its appeal is how slimmed down and fast it runs.

[markmall]

OK, then 24 lol.

Posted via CB10

I'm not buying 24. That sounds ridiculous. Who works with their nose stuck in their cell phone all day juggling 24 apps?

[Invictus0]

You are still making presumptions. Chen didn't know how the Android business was going to work. As it turns out, they aren't even designing the devices now and are just licensing. We also don't know when Blackberry decided to stop BB10 devices for good. The mix of devices was not even 25-percent when he made this lowered bar.

I see the basis for an inference but nothing more.

I'm sure they must have had internal sales estimates. They had some sort of a roadmap for more devices when the Priv launched.

John Chen confirms 'we have a range of products after this' in interview with Fox Business | CrackBerry.com

First look at the BlackBerry "Vienna" - the company's second Android phone! | CrackBerry.com

[markmall]

I'm sure they must have had internal sales estimates. They had some sort of a roadmap for more devices when the Priv launched.

John Chen confirms 'we have a range of products after this' in interview with Fox Business | CrackBerry.com

First look at the BlackBerry "Vienna" - the company's second Android phone! | CrackBerry.com

Without doing any marketing or sustaining any product line (i.e., Passport 2), how do they possibly project sales numbers for anything? Just take a wild guess? I wonder how many Priv sales they projected versus actually realized.

[Invictus0]

Without doing any marketing or sustaining any product line (i.e., Passport 2), how do they possibly project sales numbers for anything? Just take a wild guess? I wonder how many Priv sales they projected versus actually realized.

They do marketing and sales projections can be made from a number of different factors (interest, preorders, etc). Check out the interview below, it touches on some of your questions.

http://www.recode.net/2015/11/2/1162...en-looking-for

[markmall]

They do marketing and sales projections can be made from a number of different factors (interest, preorders, etc). Check out the interview below, it touches on some of your questions.

http://www.recode.net/2015/11/2/1162...en-looking-for

I don't see anything there. I do find this interesting: "Beard says BlackBerry will aggressively market the Priv, giving it a far larger marketing budget than other recent devices, such as the BB10-based Classic, Leap and Passport."

So Chen poured in the cash to market the Priv but could not outsell the Passport (IMO). What did he get for his marketing dollars?

[app_Developer]

25 apps? What exactly do you need 25 apps for?

Posted via CB10

All sorts of functions. Customer service reps have apps to take calls at home. Financial advisers have apps. Tellers have apps for their job. Network services and technicians have apps. Executives have apps for various metrics and monitoring functions. Our secure conferencing is via an app. The auto loans teams have apps for everything from recoveries to pricing. Our phones ping us when they know we have a meeting in another bldg and a bus headed in the right direction is within 3 min. We use an app to take pictures of receipts and automatically submit expense reports. We use apps to pay in our cafeterias and snack corners (many don't even have card readers anymore). We also use slack.

Many of these actually use Good Dynamics. So BB does have a role in these.

[Troy Tiscareno]

I also think those are garishly pessimistic numbers. $100 million for minor updates and support? That would pay for a 1,000 person army of programmers at an average of $100,000 per year.

I'm not sure you understand what good programmers cost. In the US, $120,000/year base salary, plus (serious) benefits, is kind of the minimum for a programmer with the skills that you'd want working on your smartphone OS. Total cost to the company, when salary, benefits, taxes (15% payroll tax right off the top), office space, provisioning (computers, phones, etc.), training, travel to 1 or 2 developer conferences per year, etc. is in the range of $250-300k per "base" programmer - and there are naturally people who make quite a bit more per year than the minimum. Figure $100M/year gives you a solid 300 person team, in the US at least.

Apple and Google both spend well north of $1B/year on their mobile platforms, with Google spending closer to $2B/year. "Full Development" in order to be competitive simply isn't going to be all that much less - I strongly question if $750M/year would be enough. IMO, those numbers are more than fair.

They already owned physical plant to put them in.

BB sold off virtually all of its real estate between the end of 2013 and mid-2014, after they cut 3400 jobs, so I'm pretty sure they did not have the space after that date.

[JSmith422]

They might be able to do so, but such a BB10 approach would result only in minimal upgrades over the years on the software side. So all updates would be like 10.3.3: yes, it's an update, but it brings almost nothing new.

Such an approach would bring nothing new, it would just be small updates over the years while every other OS moves truly forward in their own way.

That's not what I'm describing at all. Perhaps it's just because our business is in private equity and we often acquire companies that other people have run into the ground - and then we make them profitable - but I just don't believe for a second that the only choices are to spend a billion dollars and try to compete with Android or close up shop.

There is value in bb10. It would take a creative team to unlock that value, but there's value there.

Sorry for the double reply, wasn't sure how to expand on my other post, AND incorporate my comments to markmall.

Posted via CB10

[Chuck Finley69]

What business sector are you in? I also think there must be millions of potential sales in certain industries and was saddened that Chen would not aggressively pursue these markets. He acted as though he would, but he clearly did not.

The fact that Chen licenses out everything should tell us all we need to know: Chen doesn't know how to execute. The problem was not necessarily BB10.

The problem always has been BB10. There has never been anything to execute with because the fact is BB10 killed BlackBerry from a cash flow perspective. Every person that switched from BIS type pre-BB10 devices, lost BlackBerry money since each user generated $5-10/month revenue. BB10 never had a replacement source of revenue that was realistic. Apple integrating apps with iTunes for a recurring type of revenue stream was not going to happen in 2013. BlackBerry was never giving BB10 away like Android to allow manufacturers to help build ecosystems. Big reason nobody wanted to buy company in 2013 was the cinder block that BB10 was attached to BlackBerry. The worse thing about BB10 was the more it sold/converted BBOS users, it killed the company faster in terms of cash flow. It accelerated the company into a sharp nosedive from what had been a gradual decent. It could be argued that BlackBerry founders never really intended for BB10 to succeed, just give extended time for unloading BlackBerry stock insider holdings.
As I've stated before, if you back out capital infusion from Prem/Fairfax since it was given to BlackBerry for the acquisitions Chen made, the company runs out their cash position in all scenarios faster than Chen's actual hardware strategy that he executed. The desire to keep non-US markets using BBM with stickers or what ever other focus was about slowing down BIS subscriber exodus..

[app_Developer]

That's not what I'm describing at all. Perhaps it's just because our business is in private equity and we often acquire companies that other people have run into the ground - and then we make them profitable - but I just don't believe for a second that the only choices are to spend a billion dollars and try to compete with Android or close up shop.

Have you ever seen an operating system that doesn't have millions of lines of code in it? These are not simple things. Have you ever invested in a company that maintained software that complicated? I can't think of a single company with a codebase of that size/complexity and doing it cheaply. Can you?

You could make an open source project out of it, I suppose, but any real world OSS project of this size still has enormous money poured into it. The only difference is that investment is spread across many companies typically. But what constellation of companies want to invest into an open source BB10?

There is value in bb10. It would take a creative team to unlock that value, but there's value there.

Your firm should consider buying BB10 above the kernel, then. I'm quite sure Chen would love to unload it. Or you could invest in a software firm and have them license BB10 and QNX. I think you'd be utterly foolish to do so, but if you believe there is real value there, I'm sure BB would be more than willing to let someone try.

[JSmith422]

All sorts of functions. Customer service reps have apps to take calls at home. Financial advisers have apps. Tellers have apps for their job. Network services and technicians have apps. Executives have apps for various metrics and monitoring functions. Our secure conferencing is via an app. The auto loans teams have apps for everything from recoveries to pricing. Our phones ping us when they know we have a meeting in another bldg and a bus headed in the right direction is within 3 min. We use an app to take pictures of receipts and automatically submit expense reports. We use apps to pay in our cafeterias and snack corners (many don't even have card readers anymore). We also use slack.

Many of these actually use Good Dynamics. So BB does have a role in these.

BB10 does many of the things you just said, and does them well. As for others, it sounds like Android is perfect for you....."Our phones ping us when they know we have a meeting in another bldg and a bus headed in the right direction is within 3 min." - this is the kind of thinking that works for Android, but doesn't work for everyone including the blackberry market I'm suggesting. For example, when we are meeting with a potential acquisition target, nobody is supposed to know about that meeting, because it signals that their company is in financial distress and can cause all sorts of problems. That information needs to be kept complete sealed.

Posted via CB10

[Chuck Finley69]

That's not what I'm describing at all. Perhaps it's just because our business is in private equity and we often acquire companies that other people have run into the ground - and then we make them profitable - but I just don't believe for a second that the only choices are to spend a billion dollars and try to compete with Android or close up shop.

There is value in bb10. It would take a creative team to unlock that value, but there's value there.

Sorry for the double reply, wasn't sure how to expand on my other post, AND incorporate my comments to markmall.

Posted via CB10

Ask yourself why no private equity players have pursued BlackBerry for BB10 OS? Fairfax and Chen are well respected in terms of turning companies that were run into the ground.. Especially since your company does this, why haven't they made a turnaround attempt for BlackBerry??

[app_Developer]

BB10 does many of the things you just said, and does them well. As for others, it sounds like Android is perfect for you....."Our phones ping us when they know we have a meeting in another bldg and a bus headed in the right direction is within 3 min." - this is the kind of thinking that works for Android, but doesn't work for everyone including the blackberry market I'm suggesting. For example, when we are meeting with a potential acquisition target, nobody is supposed to know about that meeting, because it signals that their company is in financial distress and can cause all sorts of problems. That information needs to be kept complete sealed.

Umm, these are internal meetings and notifications on our own devices. We have 80,000 employees. How many meetings do you think are internal vs external? BTW, we're in financial services also. And we are regulated. We are very much BB's target market, and BB has even pointed us out by name before. At one point we had about 20,000 BB7 phones here.

Anyway, do you not get notifications when you have a meeting coming up? The only difference with our notifications is that they tie in other useful information like the real time location of our buses. These are useful things that you can do when you can make your own apps. The notifications on our screens, they're not on twitter or something.

The point is we've spent money now building/buying all of these services and apps for iOS and Android. So we would have our own version of the app gap if we were to think about BB10 phones. Do you really think we're going to integrate all of our snack machines to work with BB10? Or rewrite all of our internal pricing apps? Or all the other things we've invested in?

[Troy Tiscareno]

That's not what I'm describing at all. Perhaps it's just because our business is in private equity and we often acquire companies that other people have run into the ground - and then we make them profitable - but I just don't believe for a second that the only choices are to spend a billion dollars and try to compete with Android or close up shop.

You choosing not to believe it doesn't make it any less true.

There is value in bb10. It would take a creative team to unlock that value, but there's value there.

What is the value?

BB10 lost BB about $10B in cash and assets - that's a negative value of $10B! This isn't 2007, when 2nd Gen smartphones were new and people would accept functional limitations - it's 2017 and people are used to their one smartphone being able to do just about anything. Even businessmen book hotels, rent cars, use Uber and Lyft, use conference schedule apps, secure video conferencing, remote training/webinars, accounting apps, billing apps, CRM apps, and on and on. Apps are more than Candy Crush and Pokemon. And those businessmen go home sometimes too - and want to use the apps that control their entertainment and home automation products, view their medical records, handle their insurance, their security cameras, their neighborhood watch, etc.

Obviously the number of people who value BB10's strengths isn't zero, but it's also no where near large enough to sustain the platform. If you believe otherwise, then why have BB10 sales fallen every quarter since the first full quarter after release? Why have so few recognized this value? Why do even BB10 fans say they can't recommend BB10 to many of the people who ask them about smartphones?

You can believe anything you like - but there is no evidence to back up your belief. The realities of the market are what they are, and BB10 or WinPhone or WebOS or Tizen or Sailfish or Ubuntu or whatever other OS has to be able to compete, and turn a profit, in the current market or the business isn't feasible.

All of the market evidence points to the fact that BB10 wasn't a feasible business. If you have evidence to the contrary (rather than just believing some evidence must exist), then what is it? I'm sure Chen and others would love to hear it.

[JSmith422]

Ask yourself why no private equity players have pursued BlackBerry for BB10 OS? Fairfax and Chen are well respected in terms of turning companies that were run into the ground.. Especially since your company does this, why haven't they made a turnaround attempt for BlackBerry??

You must know more than the rest of us if you know that no private equity players have pursued bb10?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Just because you haven't seen a deal doesn't mean they haven't been pursued.

Blackberry may not be ready to part with BB10, or perhaps it's unrealistic in what it thinks it can get, or maybe it would rather take the write down than sell at a discount. All of these are reasons why a deal might not get done.....but they have nothing to do with the viability of the product or the underlying market.

Posted via CB10

[app_Developer]

You must know more than the rest of us if you know that no private equity players have pursued bb10?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Just because you haven't seen a deal doesn't mean they haven't been pursued.

Blackberry may not be ready to part with BB10, or perhaps it's unrealistic in what it thinks it can get, or maybe it would rather take the write down than sell at a discount. All of these are reasons why a deal might not get done.....but they have nothing to do with the viability of the product or the underlying market.

It seems this is being stretched beyond credulity now. Chen is willing to sell the furniture up there practically. If someone wanted to license or buy BB10 and have a go at it, Chen would do either deal.

Why hasn't anyone even licensed BB10? BB is on the record saying they would license BB10. Why has no company done that?

[JSmith422]

Umm, these are internal meetings and notifications on our own devices. We have 80,000 employees. How many meetings do you think are internal vs external? BTW, we're in financial services also. And we are regulated. We are very much BB's target market, and BB has even pointed us out by name before. At one point we had about 20,000 BB7 phones here.

Anyway, do you not get notifications when you have a meeting coming up? The only difference with our notifications is that they tie in other useful information like the real time location of our buses. These are useful things that you can do when you can make your own apps. The notifications on our screens, they're not on twitter or something.

The point is we've spent money now building/buying all of these services and apps for iOS and Android. So we would have our own version of the app gap if we were to think about BB10 phones. Do you really think we're going to integrate all of our snack machines to work with BB10? Or rewrite all of our internal pricing apps? Or all the other things we've invested in?

What I'm suggesting is that you WERE blackberry's target market but you don't CURRENTLY represent an existing under served marketplace, which is WHY blackberry built too many devices and didn't sell any....they thought they could sell to you, but they were wrong.

You're argument actually proves my point.

What you're missing is that by focusing on why blackberry doesn't work at your businesses doesn't change the fact there is still a small under served market out there.

Posted via CB10

[app_Developer]

I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm suggesting with a properly structured subsidiary entity, Blackberry could monetize prior investment utilizing an existing under served marketplace through a relatively minimal investment.

When you have a product that very few people will buy, and you can't even cover your fixed costs, then I'm afraid no amount of financial engineering is going to make that problem go away. At the end of the day, you kind of always have to have something to sell that people are willing to buy.

[app_Developer]

What I'm suggesting is that you WERE blackberry's target market but you don't CURRENTLY represent an existing under served marketplace, which is WHY blackberry built too many devices and didn't sell any....they thought they could sell to you, but they were wrong.

You're argument actually proves my point.

What you're missing is that by focusing on why blackberry doesn't work at your businesses doesn't change the fact there is still a small under served market out there.

Where is this mythical market of BB10 buyers? And how big is it?

[Chuck Finley69]

You must know more than the rest of us if you know that no private equity players have pursued bb10?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Just because you haven't seen a deal doesn't mean they haven't been pursued.

Blackberry may not be ready to part with BB10, or perhaps it's unrealistic in what it thinks it can get, or maybe it would rather take the write down than sell at a discount. All of these are reasons why a deal might not get done.....but they have nothing to do with the viability of the product or the underlying market.

Posted via CB10

BlackBerry is publicly traded. You just need shareholders to accept your offer. Right now, buying the company for its current strategy assets, you can have BB10 for practically nothing.. On behalf of shareholders, Chen's not holding out for anything but a buyout offer that convinces majority of shareholders into tendering shares.