[universalbit]

Dude - Microsoft just bought Nokia's mobile phones unit. They will survive. (Though how long they retain the "Nokia" brandname is an open question.)

List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Totally agree with you that Nokia will survive.

Currently, total market cap Nokia = USD29.44Bn (or USD7.93 per share). If MS takes over part of Nokia (the handset div) for USD7.2Bn then the rest value of Nokia as of now = USD 22.24Bn.

Maybe it is overvalue, but ....
"In various sum-of-the-parts scenarios, JP Morgan valued NSN at between 6.07 billion and 12.1 billion euros - 0.5 to 1.0 times 2014 sales - compared with the 0.3 times 12-month forward sales at which bigger French rival Alcatel-Lucent trades."

Nokia handsets sale reveals revamped networks value | Reuters

This NSN (Nokia Solutions and Networks) is still much more valuable than BB at this moment with BB's current USD3.27Bn (at USD6.36 per share) market cap. And ever people in CB have been wondering ... why MS would buy Nokia Handset business for USD7.2Bn while the whole BB business is much lower than that. So, why Nokia is so much more valuable than BB?

[Troy Tiscareno]

BlackBerry is all about the handsets. the handset is unique and BBRY is well known for their handsets as well. what comes to my mind is, perhaps in the future BBRY will be licensing its BB10 to any other OEMs but they will keep making handsets just like androids & the nexus.. the BB10 handsets are the "nexus".. that's what i believe IMHO..

There was a time when IBM was known for their hardware. It's even in the name: International Business MACHINES. Yet today, they are primarily a software/database company, and doing quite well.

Nokia started out as a paper manufacturer, then moved into things like winter boots, and eventually into electronics and communications.

It is hardly unprecedented for a company that originally did one thing to drop that thing when market forces dictate and transform itself into another line of business. Now, often that transformation isn't successful, but the fact is clear that BB's smartphone business is failing, and they are burning money by staying in it.

By moving to software only, they might not ever be the large company they once were, but that's already true, because the smartphone business has caused them to shrink in size by about 2/3 over the last few years, and I think they still have plenty of room to cut headcount still. But BB *could* survive as a viable, profitable company doing software-only. I can't see a way for them to survive as a smartphone manufacturer. It's a business that requires volume to work, and BB's volumes are too low for that business to be profitable, unless anyone thinks that they can sell Z30s for $1500 each along with BES10 to businesses (which have other secure solution options, including Samsung/Knox, which offers a Balance-like split between work and personal use, and is available for less).

People keep saying "it doesn't make sense" for BB to get rid of the handset business, but how does it make sense to stay in it and lose huge amounts of money? Why is it that no one can answer that question?

[RH1Pearl]

To remain in handset business will come at a huge cost, the first will be more layoffs.

Also, if BlackBerry is indeed still in handset biz, why is there no marketing push and Ad blitz for the Z30 before the Christmas holidays? It's gonna get harder to sell the Z30 once the new Android Flagship phones are announced or launched in 2Q 2014. This is not 2006 when BB7 phones could sell itself.

[CairnsRock]

To remain in handset business will come at a huge cost, the first will be more layoffs.

Also, if BlackBerry is indeed still in handset biz, why is there no marketing push and Ad blitz for the Z30 before the Christmas holidays? It's gonna get harder to sell the Z30 once the new Android Flagship phones are announced or launched in 2Q 2014. This is not 2006 when BB7 phones could sell itself.

Think of the Z30 in terms of the Playbook 4G/LTE. There was no rhyme nor reason to release these products into the world and then orphan them, but they went ahead and did it anyways. I think that we credit them with more competence than they deserve or have shown. It's just tragic. Don't expect to see any Z30 marketing.

[Troy Tiscareno]

Think of the Z30 in terms of the Playbook 4G/LTE. There was no rhyme nor reason to release these products into the world and then orphan them, but they went ahead and did it anyways. I think that we credit them with more competence than they deserve or have shown. It's just tragic. Don't expect to see any Z30 marketing.

Actually, there is one big reason: these products have a lead time of about 18 months, from initial concept to completion of manufacture. Companies have to order the hardware components about a year in advance, usually before the parts in question are even in mass production, in order to secure them by the time actual manufacturing starts. These parts aren't just manufactured hoping someone will come along and order them; you can't just buy several million SoCs, screens, mics, speakers, etc. off the shelf - that inventory doesn't exist. So, for both of these products, the parts were purchased long before it became clear that the product lines weren't going sell well, and once the component parts were purchased, the choice is either to scrap them all and lose your sunk costs or to go ahead and pay to have them assembled and then try to sell the resulting product, hoping that you sell enough of them to come out ahead.

As I've said, I think BB will be selling existing Z10s, Q10s, and Z30s to businesses and to governments for the next 12-18 months. These are the types of customers who will prioritize BB's strengths (primarily security with BES) over unit price or having the very latest hardware. Still, it will take that long to move most of the existing inventory at today's rate of sales, so there's no reason to be making anymore phones. Once those have been sold off (i.e., at least 12 months from now), I believe BB will finally announce that they are leaving the handset business. I don't expect an announcement before then, because it would undermine the sales of the existing hardare.

However, I also don't expect to see BB doing any of the things that a company that intended to continue to be in the handset business would do, such as: leaking substantial info about future devices, or investing considerable R&D into future smartphones. In fact, it's clear that a large portion of the employees who used to be responsible for device development, manufacturing, and marketing, have been let go.

BB may be holding out the hope that if they continue to develop BB10, that they might eventually find a company who is willing to license the OS. That's really tough given that so many of those OEMs are Open Handset Alliance members and are prohibited from making BB10 phones, but there are a couple of manufacturers, such as Quanta (who made the Playbooks) who might take a shot (I doubt it, but it's not totally impossible). But they also need to keep developing BB10 to sell the existing inventory, and to stall for time until BES10 is robust enough with non-BB devices to compete with the other MDM software solutions on the market.

If you make the assumption that the company decided to exit the smartphone business back in July/August, then everything they've done since then makes perfect sense (again, it wouldn't make sense to make that decision public, so I didn't expect them to do so). If you assume that they'll continue as a device manufacturer, then there are a whole string of decisions they've made since that time that make no sense at all, and that's what led me to this post.

[MartyMcfly]

BlackBerry is all about the handsets. the handset is unique and BBRY is well known for their handsets as well. what comes to my mind is, perhaps in the future BBRY will be licensing its BB10 to any other OEMs but they will keep making handsets just like androids & the nexus.. the BB10 handsets are the "nexus".. that's what i believe IMHO..

License their OS to who? The market rejected the OS.


Sent from my iPhone 5s using Tapatalk

[anon(3732391)]

It's this simple!
Don't believe ANYTHING unless you heard it from Oprah,
or read it in The National Enquirer!

[slickvguy]

They may not actually manufacture the handsets, but they certainly will continue offering Blackberry handsets for years to come.
The focus has to be different. The handsets are there merely to use the software/services. Not the other way around.

As for your "evidence", my only response is "lol". There IS no evidence. Au contraire.

About 1,000 years ago, when the PC revolution began, people bought PCs because of Visicalc. Then Lotus 1-2-3, Wordperfect, and dBase II. Not the other way around. The software drove the hardware sales. Each innovation and advance in software was the catalyst driving hardware sales.

Why buy a Blackberry handset tomorrow? Because that's what you need in order to __________. When/if Blackberry can fill in that blank with a need that has sufficient numbers behind it, it'll turnaround. Otherwise, it's toast.

Now that they've gone cross-platform with BBM, that big reason why some - especially in the developing markets - were hanging onto their BB7 devices. No longer. They will all upgrade to cheap Androids and use BBM on those handsets. It was only a matter of time until BBRY lost those markets, because they can't compete with cheap handsets, so even though it'll hurt handset sales in the short run, I believe it was the right move.

[milo53]

Except that he absolutely didn't confirm anything of the sort.

He spoke of "delivering devices". They're sitting on a warehouse full of unsold BB10 devices, and probably some BBOS devices as well, and at this rate, they might still have plenty for sale 2 years from now. Nowhere did he say a single word about making or manufacturing devices. Nor has he said BB10 by name; he's been absolutely mum on that subject, if you'll notice.

Chen has been asked point blank if he planned to discontinue manufacturing hardware, and he said "I'm not sure that it makes sense" but that's a non-answer. I absolutely expect a non-answer, because BB needs to maintain the illusion that they are still in the hardware business as long as they have a bunch of inventory that needs to be sold. If they formally announced they were out of the hardware business, it would mean the existing inventory would have to be sold off in a fire sale. Chen wants to wring as many dollars as possible out of the current stock of phones before that happens.

I notice that no one is refuting my points with any real evidence (I don't believe that can be done, but maybe there's evidence I haven't seen). From a manufacturing standpoint, BB has BEEN out of the hardware manufacturing game since the end of September, when the last Z30 was assembled and the Jabil Circuit contract was canceled.

How many billion dollar manufacturers don't have a CMO or COO? Good luck finding one. Those positions are hugely important if you are in that business. Not having those positions is clear evidence that BB doesn't see itself in that business in the near future.

Troy, thanks for analysis. I think you are spot on. Elimination of CMO is a clear sign of exiting consumer biz. Hardware is done, it would have ended months ago, but the parts were paid for a while back.

Part time, lame duck, commuter CEO is all that's left.

And the Lawyer guy.

[slickvguy]

License their OS to who? The market rejected the OS.


Sent from my iPhone 5s using Tapatalk

No, the market did not reject the OS. That's false. The market doesn't even know it exists! The average NA consumer thinks Blackberry is already out of business! It's not a rejection of BB10. That would actually have been better.

But your point is correct. Why would anyone choose to license BB10? It's an android world. Even if BB10 was given away for free. Who is going to do battle with Samsung/Google? Nobody.

In the final analysis, with the advantage of hindsight, BB10 was a vanity project. Perhaps a good idea years ago, had they been able to get it to market two years ago. But they failed. it's too late now. Blackberry has to reinvent themselves if they have any hope of staying alive. Radical changes are required. I believe Chen understands this. First, focus all energy on their core in order to stabilize and slow down the bleeding. Second, make those radical changes.

[slickvguy]

You've written a number of excellent posts Troy. Thank you.

People keep saying "it doesn't make sense" for BB to get rid of the handset business, but how does it make sense to stay in it and lose huge amounts of money? Why is it that no one can answer that question?

See my other posts for a few of my thoughts on this subject. And a few more...

1) They WILL NOT continue doing what they have done in the past, i.e. losing billions on devices. That is OVER. Done.
2) I agree that even if they exit, they won't announce it yet, in order to dump inventory.
3) There IS a way to continue making handsets for a niche clientele they serve AND not lose huge amounts of money. It really isn't that difficult. They obviously won't be able to compete on price - i.e. the phones would have to be more expensive due to lower quantities - but the few who remain will not care about that. The problem is that they were totally clueless - even after the playbook debacle. What a waste. They ramped up production. They drank their own kool-aid. Then the returns hit and they are stuck with a ton of phones which WILL slowly but surely be sold. This company has operated in a vacuum for so long. They spent years trying to bring BB10 to the market. Waaaaay too late. And everyone - except the executives? - knew it. They actually believed this was going to be a game-changer? That they were going to reverse market share trends and recapture market? lol.
4) Whether or not they exit handsets is entirely based on where they take the company. Unless Blackberry offers software/services that are unique and valuable enough AND that one cannot get from a competitor on an android or apple handset - then there is nothing to drive BLACKBERRY handsets.
5) My prediction: they are going to dump BB10 and go with a BB10-ized Android. They will still continue to manufacture - or have someone else manufacture - handsets in small quantities for a very small slice of the market, because they need their customers to own the BB car that they sell the fuel for.

[tchocky77]

Bbry hasn't made a successful product (by any meaningful metric) since the 9900.

IF they survive at all, and that's a very big IF, it will not be as a device manufacturer. That much is obvious by now.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using CB Forums mobile app

[Omnitech]

Except that a Porsche and a GM car don't cost the same.

So what? There is no way that any company can compete with ridiculously commoditized Androids these days, there are probably a half-dozen new bottom-feeding vendors a week that decide to start marketing a cheap Android device made by some miscellaneous Asian OEM somewhere.

Look at the profit numbers he posted, on a per revenue-dollar basis, Porsche is twice as profitable as GM is on that basis, with 1/10th the employees, and nowadays is running a pretty peachy business overall. (Helps to be part of VW now) Nothing wrong with that approach at all, assuming you have a product with the kind of quality that can demand those kinds of prices. Porsche does. BlackBerry isn't in that sweet spot right now, but they used to be.

By moving to software only, they might not ever be the large company they once were, but that's already true, because the smartphone business has caused them to shrink in size by about 2/3 over the last few years, and I think they still have plenty of room to cut headcount still. But BB *could* survive as a viable, profitable company doing software-only.

Please list any other company that has been successful doing that in the smartphone market.

Still waiting....

Microsoft's platform is a dud, hasn't been going anywhere (BlackBerry by some measures still has a larger marketshare in the USA) and they're the biggest software company in the world.

A large part of the problem is that you have organizations like Google and Mozilla that are giving the OS away for nothing. Ask Netscape how well that turned out for them.

Elimination of CMO is a clear sign of exiting consumer biz.

Citing so-called "facts" not in evidence. EVERY company that produces a product needs to market it. They may not be marketing it to Joe Sixpack, but market it they must do.

Last time I checked, the local Best Buy was not selling tractors bigger than your house, nuclear power stations or airliners, yet those companies all have CMO's.

Boeing: Mark G. Hooper
Caterpillar Vice President Paolo Fellin
Beth Comstock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blackberry's reason for elimination of that position at the current time probably has more to do with cost-cutting and the start of general management shakeup than anything having to do with "exiting" any particular business.

[chance1180]

OP, you reading between the lines of press releases is not proof, its speculation. Asking for proof to your speculation is like jerking your hand to jerk off. Its simply ridiculous... and hilarious. There's no proof that they will continue or discontinue their handset division. The absence of any affirmative statements about bb10 handsets is your crutch argument. But, likewise, there aren't any negative statements either.

Posted via CB10

[Alex Alex]

Hi,where do you suport your opinion ?

[punar]

http://forums.crackberry.com/news-ru...erryos-877917/

I don't generally start threads here, and I debated whether to start this one, especially given the topic, which I know isn't going to be received with open arms by many Crackberrians. Still, I think it needs to be said.

BB eliminated the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief Operations Officer (COO) positions today. They didn't just fire the folks in those positions, they dissolved those positions. Think about that for a second: they no longer feel that Marketing and Operations divisions are important enough to be led by a C-suite-level position. How is that possible if they plan to continue to be in the hardware business? In my opinion, it isn't.

Instead, I see this as yet another strong piece of evidence that BB does not plan to be in the hardware business going forward, and in fact has ALREADY exited the market. Let's look at the reasons why I believe that is true:

• Massive losses in hardware, with nearly $2 billion in write-downs over the last couple of years, between the Playbook and the Z10.
• Continued bleeding of marketshare, and particularly low sales of BB10 devices (BBOS has outsold BB10 each quarter, by a wide margin).
• At the end of September, BB canceled its contract with the OEM manufacturer, Jabil Circuit, who actually made the BB handsets, leaving them without a manufacturing partner.
• John Chen's repeated statements about focusing on software and services going forward, and refusing to outright deny that BB was exiting the hardware business (it makes sense not to do so while they still have existing inventory to sell).
• And now, eliminating the CMO and COO positions entirely.

In the face of all of that evidence, I don't see how anyone can believe that hardware is in BB's (near) future.

I don't believe that BB is going to cease to exist, mind you. Rather, I see BB pretty quickly becoming a sub-1000-person software company (maybe closer to 500 employees, total), focusing on QNX, XBBM, and BES/MDM. It's also possible that one or more of these lines of business may be spun off into a separate company. Clearly, there is value in these areas and potential for profits, but BB's days as a company that makes billions in revenue and competes in the smartphone market are, IMO, clearly over, at least for the foreseeable future.

Could they jump back in 5 years down the road? Who knows? Maybe HTML6 (7? 8?) will have made native apps truly obsolete, and the smartphone OS world will be broken wide open again, with lots of new competition. For the current cycle, though, BB took WAY too long to take multi-touch, web, media, and app-enabled smartphones seriously, and by the time they made a real effort to get back into the game, it was too little and WAY too late. 95+% of the blame for that rests with Mike and Jim, without a doubt. Thorsten was obviously not the right guy for the CEO job, but to be fair, his task was nearly impossible to begin with, due to the situation Mike and Jim left him with.

I get that this is a BB fan site, and this post isn't going to be popular, but can anyone really say it's not realistic? Is there any real, substantial evidence that points in the other direction?

Here is the scoop:
Blackberry does not manufacture handsets.
They have already announced that they will introduce two more handsets to the market. That would take the number of handsets available close to ten worldwide, behind Samsung, Sony and Nokia/Microsoft. There is no need for a new design or more models now.

The fact that Mr. Chen is a software guy; it would then make sense for Blackberry to concentrate and continue to develop the existing software to stay competitive in the present and future market. The next big thing is automobile integration which is software based and with that coming, Blackberry will still have to have handsets to integrate with QNX. They may only need to have a few handsets made in the future, but it will be enough to satisfy their customers. “Quality not quantity”.

So when Chen was asked if he planned to discontinue manufacturing hardware, and he said "I'm not sure” it simply means that he is not going to announce what his strategy going to be.

Jabil Circuit contract was cancelled because smartphone hardware design is dead, the funds for hardware manufacture will be allocated to where it should be spent ….software design and development.
Remember that Blackberry became popular because of its software and not hardware.

[cgk]

Still waiting....

Microsoft's platform is a dud, hasn't been going anywhere (BlackBerry by some measures still has a larger marketshare in the USA) and they're the biggest software company in the world.

By no measure I've seen - MSFT has BB10 beaten in every first world nation as far as I'm aware in terms of marketshare.

[RH1Pearl]

Here is the scoop:
Blackberry does not manufacture handsets.
They have already announced that they will introduce two more handsets to the market. That would take the number of handsets available close to ten worldwide, behind Samsung, Sony and Nokia/Microsoft. There is no need for a new design or more models now.

The fact that Mr. Chen is a software guy; it would then make sense for Blackberry to concentrate and continue to develop the existing software to stay competitive in the present and future market. The next big thing is automobile integration which is software based and with that coming, Blackberry will still have to have handsets to integrate with QNX. They may only need to have a few handsets made in the future, but it will be enough to satisfy their customers. “Quality not quantity”.

So when Chen was asked if he planned to discontinue manufacturing hardware, and he said "I'm not sure” it simply means that he is not going to announce what his strategy going to be.

Jabil Circuit contract was cancelled because smartphone hardware design is dead, the funds for hardware manufacture will be allocated to where it should be spent ….software design and development.
Remember that Blackberry became popular because of its software and not hardware.

The problem with BlackBerry's competition is some of them can offer both Quantity and Quality.

[nt300]

If you read between the lines and the Q&A session that Kevin had with Chen you should quickly realize he pointed out the weaknesses and plans on rectifying those issues. One being Lack Luster marketing. BBRY will also NOT abandon the hardware business, because they would not be following the will of the people, it's customers.

Without a BlackBerry device, there is NO BBRY.

Also I keep reading posts about the new CEO not mentioning BB10 but instead QNX.
Take this as you may, but mark my words, Blackberry is NOT BlackBerry without its OS, BB10.
BB10 represents innovation that goes beyond anything out to date. Real time, true Multi- Tasking OS.

[RH1Pearl]

If you read between the lines and the Q&A session that Kevin had with Chen you should quickly realize he pointed out the weaknesses and plans on rectifying those issues. One being Lack Luster marketing. BBRY will also NOT abandon the hardware business, because they would not be following the will of the people, it's customers.

Without a BlackBerry device, there is NO BBRY.

Also I keep reading posts about the new CEO not mentioning BB10 but instead QNX.
Take this as you may, but mark my words, Blackberry is NOT BlackBerry without its OS, BB10.
BB10 represents innovation that goes beyond anything out to date. Real time, true Multi- Tasking OS.

What do you mean by Real time? Is everything I do on another phone delayed by 5 or 10 minutes?

[Troy Tiscareno]

If you read between the lines and the Q&A session that Kevin had with Chen you should quickly realize he pointed out the weaknesses and plans on rectifying those issues. One being Lack Luster marketing.

And that was solved by eliminating the position of Chief Marketing Officer? How does that make sense?

BBRY will also NOT abandon the hardware business, because they would not be following the will of the people, it's customers.

The vast majority of BB's customers are using BBOS, and in fact, BBOS still outsells BB10 by a large margin. After 9-10 months on the market, BB has sold a little over 3M BB10 phones. That's roughly the same number of Google-certified Android devices (meaning, Kindle Fires and Chinese-market Androids aren't included in this number) that are activated EVERY TWO DAYS.

There simply aren't enough BB10 customers to make the continued manufacture of BB10 phones viable. BB has at least 3-4M BB10 phones in inventory. That's enough for another whole year of sales without making a single new phone, and that's assuming that sales next year will equal the sales this year, which is unlikely.

Without a BlackBerry device, there is NO BBRY.

And that may be true, but WITH BB devices, there is no BBRY either, because they are losing money on every phone they make.

[sixpacker]

Completely agree with the OP.

I guess you could also add they have made no statements about handset developments in the past 5 or 6 months.

I truly believe they had a great opportunity (with QNX, TAT et al) to be a market leader, unfortunately they were way to conservative and screwed up big time on pricing, marketing blah blah...

[mset]

And your thread didn't confirm anything. It's not evidence of any kind.

Over the past 8 months, I've read some eye-wateringly myopic posts here. I've spent some time on the 'net, in forums related to music and to trading. But never, at any time, have I seen the kind of wilful, brutish, almost perverse lack of critical thinking that we've witnessed here.

The fact that BBRY is eliminating the position of Chief Marketing Officer isn't evidence of any kind? Of any kind?? I mean, I understand if you think that there's a way forward for BBRY in the hardware business without a CMO or COO (understand in the sense that I understand there are folks who don't understand how corporations work, so you might believe that) but to claim that this is 'no evidence of any kind'...

People ask why we stay here if we're bearish on BBRY as a hardware maker going forward. It is indeed like a car crash. Posts like this just compel you to watch.

[Bluenoser63]

Elimination of CMO is a clear sign of exiting consumer biz. Hardware is done, it would have ended months ago, but the parts were paid for a while back

If that is your logic, then they might as well shut the doors. If they don't have a CMO and that means that they are existing consumer biz, then how are they going to market to enterprise customers. Using your logic, you might as well say that the elimination of the CMO means that they are existing all biz and are planning to sell nothing. Think about it? Just because there is no CMO doesn't mean that someone else can do the job.

[Bluenoser63]

Bbry hasn't made a successful product (by any meaningful metric) since the 9900.

IF they survive at all, and that's a very big IF, it will not be as a device manufacturer. That much is obvious by now.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using CB Forums mobile app

It may be obvious to those that don't understand how all the pieces work together to make an enterprise product, for those of us who do, we know that they will have to continue to make devices. Even the new CEO said that.