[markmall]

There is value in bb10. It would take a creative team to unlock that value, but there's value there.
Posted via CB10

In an odd twist, that sort of talk might get you banned on the BB10 forums.

By the way, I had a friend in private equity that was using a BBOS device for work as recently as a few years ago. All work emails had to be on these devices and nothing else. (Don't know what he's using now for work.) Do you think his employer cared that he couldn't run Instachatbook on it? How much would they pay for a faster Z30 with the BB10 virtual keyboard or a Passport with BBOS security? More than most consumers.

[JSmith422]

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?

Without reviewing the corporate bylaws, do you known that Chen has the authority to divest an asset such as bb10 without substantial approval from numerous parties?

This isn't a private business with one guy making all the decisions. Chen answers to lots of people with lots of different visions.

Deals die all the time because people can't agree.

None of anything you have presented as evidence that it doesn't work actually demonstrates that it CAN'T be viable, only that they haven't been able to make it viable under their current operational strategy.

I can think of a lot of reasons why they might leave bb10 "on the books" and write it down rather than spin it off....but none of us are privy to the vast majority of that information. And without going into a lengthy accounting lesson, it would be difficult to explain. But, suffice to say, it might be better for BlackBerry to let it die than spin it off, EVEN THOUGH the acquiring company would be viable and profitable. It's more complex than just "nobody's done it, so it can't be done.". Business just doesn't work like that.

Posted via CB10

[app_Developer]

Without reviewing the corporate bylaws, do you known that Chen has the authority to divest an asset such as bb10 without substantial approval from numerous parties?

...

I can think of a lot of reasons why they might leave bb10 "on the books" and write it down rather than spin it off....but none of us are privy to the vast majority of that information. And without going into a lengthy accounting lesson, it would be difficult to explain. But, suffice to say, it might be better for BlackBerry to let it die than spin it off, EVEN THOUGH the acquiring company would be viable and profitable. It's more complex than just "nobody's done it, so it can't be done.". Business just doesn't work like that.

That seems a lot of nonsense believable only to those clinging dearly to the carcass of BB10. Again, they are selling the buildings up there. They have no plans to make another BB10 device. Nobody is willing to license it. The board would be sued if someone were willing to actually pay real money for this OS and BB didn't agree.

So why hasn't anyone even licensed BB10? You haven't answered that one, have you? They've offered it for license, and no one has taken them up on it. Why do you think that is? If this BB10 market exists, then why doesn't someone license BB10 and go after it?

[Ronindan]

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.

Spot on - Prem Wetsa essentially bought BB for $2Billion. I will be very surprised that if someone offer him $3Billion he will turn it down because he "loves BB".

[markmall]

Fairfax and Chen are well respected in terms of turning companies that were run into the ground..

I think you mean "were well respected"... at least as to Chen.

[markmall]

So why hasn't anyone even licensed BB10? You haven't answered that one, have you? They've offered it for license, and no one has taken them up on it. Why do you think that is? If this BB10 market exists, then why doesn't someone license BB10 and go after it?

He did answer it, but you are ignoring his answer or don't get it. The tax loss might be too valuable and they are better off doing nothing. There also is the issue that BB10 might have been more valuable to Blackberry than a third party that doesn't know keyboards, the OS, etc. Blackberry was the best candidate to create value with BB10. Licensees have a lot of disadvantages compared to Blackberry.

[Invictus0]

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."

They discuss preorders, marketing, and their expectations for the Priv.

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?

Well, I guess that explains why they're licensing now.

[conite]

Do you think his employer cared that he couldn't run Instachatbook on it?

Arrrgh. Why will you not accept that businesses use apps - lots of them?

There are a tonne of EMM software, office apps, collaboration tools, and project management software.

[Uzi]

[JSmith422]

That seems a lot of nonsense believable only to those clinging dearly to the carcass of BB10. Again, they are selling the buildings up there. They have no plans to make another BB10 device. Nobody is willing to license it. The board would be sued if someone were willing to actually pay real money for this OS and BB didn't agree.

So why hasn't anyone even licensed BB10? You haven't answered that one, have you? They've offered it for license, and no one has taken them up on it. Why do you think that is? If this BB10 market exists, then why doesn't someone license BB10 and go after it?

I don't mean this in a disrespectful way at all, but it's obvious from your answer that you don't understand the financial complexities of how assets, liabilities, losses, cash flow, profits, etc affect shareholder value. Simply saying that "if someone was willing to pay real money for it, the board would be sued if they didn't sell" is, again, myopic in scope. It's so much more complex than you're making it. There's so many more assets than just "bb10," including the intellectual property which it was built around, which may or may not be separable from other blackberry products with or without separate licensing or potentially violating partnership agreements, etc, which all increase transaction cost; that doesn't even take into account cash flow off sets from mark down losses, someone could go on for days on why it might make sense for shareholder value to let BlackBerry 10 die, DESPITE the fact that someone might be willing to pay them for it. Let me put it this way, a dead blackberry 10 might be worth more to blackberry in overall value than a licensed PROFITABLE partner paying them ongoing fees.....and if Chen did divest it in some way, he may then be subject to the lawsuit of which you speak.

Again, no disrespect. We both agree that, right now, bb10 is dead and that Blackberry is not making any new devices. We agree on that. I'm simply stating that bb10 as an OS, in the right hands, does in fact, have a market and could be a profitable business. I believe that market size to approximately 1mm and below.

Sorry, but it just seems like you can't see the forest for the trees in that you can't get past the idea of a consumer mentality, app gap, device specs, and competing with Android and IOS. Home Depot uses a proprietary device in their stores. Approximately 40,000 of them actually. They obviously find it economical and profitable to design, implement, build, and update these devices and do it for only 40,000 units. AND I promise they didn't spend anywhere near a billion dollars to do it....I'll bet they didn't even spend $100mm. Further, nobody is sitting here saying it's not viable because you can't put an app on there to help you catch a bus. There is a major difference between consumer markets and commercial markets, and being able to envision bb10 in a commercial setting requires someone to step back and look at it differently than they're used to.

Posted via CB10

[JSmith422]

Spot on - Prem Wetsa essentially bought BB for $2Billion. I will be very surprised that if someone offer him $3Billion he will turn it down because he "loves BB".

$3bn????? Hahaha, nobody is paying $3bn for BlackBerry 10, at least not someone who wants to be profitable.



Posted via CB10

[Tre Lawrence]

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.



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.

I seriously can't believe we're regurgitating this stuff... in 2017 no less. Takes me back to when BB10 was new, and some folks wondered aloud as to why BBRY simply didn't drop five figures for Netflix, Facebook, et al.

Good developers cost GOOD money.

Good stuff.

[Bbnivende]

Time out for a blast from the past

https://www.google.ca/amp/gizmodo.co...ndroid-bell-ca

[kvndoom]

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?

Of course they think you should! You don't know what's best for your business; random people on the internet do!

[kvndoom]

In an odd twist, that sort of talk might get you banned on the BB10 forums.

To use your own oft-repeated words: "citation needed."

[bogdanas]

I have Z30. I decided it was time to move onto something else due to absence of apps and got DTEK 50. After a month still couldn't adjust to it, and I didn't like the quality of phone calls not saying about annoying BBM requests. Now I'm back to my old Z30....so sad.

Posted via CB10

[3165dwayne]

You convinced me. When BB10 dies I'm getting a Surface phone if one comes out. MSFT is good compared to evil Google.

Surprised you disliked the Classic so much. The Passport was developed before Chen and is Blackberrys best device ever. Chen released it (poorly) but can't get credit for it.

Posted via CB10

With how many times the government had to step in and stop Microsoft and with how they tried to destroy other competition like Linux unfairly I'm surprised that anyone could say that Microsoft isn't evil. Look at what they did to Motorola and other companies in the Windows Mobile days. Microsoft hasn't changed. It's just their position in the market that has.

[Bbnivende]

I have Z30. I decided it was time to move onto something else due to absence of apps and got DTEK 50. After a month still couldn't adjust to it, and I didn't like the quality of phone calls not saying about annoying BBM requests. Now I'm back to my old Z30....so sad.

Posted via CB10

Your mistake was in buying a cheap phone that is overpriced as well.

It will take some time to adjust to Android or iOS but in the end you will. Phones are just app launchers, cameras, media players, texting and emailing devices and telephones.

[Elephant_Canyon]

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

In an odd twist, that sort of talk might get you banned on the BB10 forums.

What a silly thing to say. Who got banned for saying anything like that? What forum rule could that statement possibly violate?

[Bbnivende]

What a silly thing to say. Who got banned for saying anything like that? What forum rule could that statement possibly violate?

Who is left to ban? As goes BlackBerry so goes CrackBerry.

[app_Developer]

He did answer it, but you are ignoring his answer or don't get it. The tax loss might be too valuable and they are better off doing nothing. There also is the issue that BB10 might have been more valuable to Blackberry than a third party that doesn't know keyboards, the OS, etc. Blackberry was the best candidate to create value with BB10. Licensees have a lot of disadvantages compared to Blackberry.

I asked why no one has even licensed it. Forget about buying it for now, what about even just licensing it?

[app_Developer]

Again, no disrespect. We both agree that, right now, bb10 is dead and that Blackberry is not making any new devices. We agree on that. I'm simply stating that bb10 as an OS, in the right hands, does in fact, have a market and could be a profitable business. I believe that market size to approximately 1mm and below.

Again, BB has said, on the record, that they would like to license BB10 to a partner who would like to do exactly that.. No partner has yet stepped forward. Why?

Home Depot uses a proprietary device in their stores. Approximately 40,000 of them actually. They obviously find it economical and profitable to design, implement, build, and update these devices and do it for only 40,000 units.

Home Depot's device runs Android. It's Android with their Home Depot app on top.

This is similar to British Museum, for example, where they have iOS with their custom app on top. ATMs work the same way on top of Windows (mostly). Of course you can do that at small scale. You can take an existing OS, put your own app on top (like we do with ATMs). You can't maintain an entire bespoke OS at that scale.

We would never make a custom OS for ATM's. That would be absurd.

[sidtek50]

Ok, i'll try and get this thread back on topic. *Please note* I am going to bash Blackberry a bit in this post. Not because i'm anti-Blackberry, but because I totally understand why they're failing to capture the market.

As much as I like my Classic, every single day i'm finding more and more features that don't work. Last week, I found out that I couldn't block calls. Unbelievable. An incredibly basic feature that Blackberry has never implemented. On my 9320 running BB7, there was a 'block all' option in the firewall settings. Absolutely ridiculous - why on earth would I want to block every single call? I want to block 1-2 numbers e.g telemarketers

I also had issues with whatsapp last week - the official whatsapp will be phased out later this year, so I loaded an apk only to find out I had to get a WAA fixer file to enable me to send photographs. This must have worked for approx one day before it stopped working.

Today, I have found I can't use PGP using gmail and the hub. It's shocking. It really is. Yesterday I found that in order to get Google Maps working, I had to use a really old version OR download a non-Google app (although the app is fairly good) - the point is, I couldn't get the latest and greatest app.

As much as I like my device - even after all of this trouble, the point remains. I'm struggling to defend my Classic at this point. Every day i'm finding new issues; things I can't quite do, apps I can't get etc

I know in my heart I can't stay with this Classic for much longer. But what do I replace it with? Do I buy a Blackberry android?? I had the DTEK50 and thought it was trash. The DTEK60 looks nice but it's beyond my price range. It's actually priced above an iPhone SE. Can you believe that?? I thought Chen and Co had learned a lesson after admitting the Priv's pricing was wrong.

I hate to say this but I can't see my next device being a Blackberry.

[markmall]

To use your own oft-repeated words: "citation needed."

Please find a post where I have said that. Also, it's called overstatement for effect not to taken literally.

Posted via CB10

[Invictus0]

The DTEK60 looks nice but it's beyond my price range. It's actually priced above an iPhone SE. Can you believe that?? I thought Chen and Co had learned a lesson after admitting the Priv's pricing was wrong.

OS aside, the DTEK60 is a flagship device with better specs than the iPhone SE. The higher pricetag isn't that surprising.

Out of curiosity, what issues did you have with the DTEK50?