[birdman_38]

Sorry to burst everyones bubble. Hardware is going to be around as long as BlackBerry

Don't stop believing.

[TGR1]

Yes, an argument based on false facts.

"False facts" has no meaning since a "fact" is by definition true. Do you mean Troy has assembled data which is not correct and thus formed an inaccurate opinion? What do you consider to be the incorrect data that has led to the inaccurate analysis?

Opinion =evidence nowadays. Did you know ?
Posted via CB10

Oh boy, textbook case of syllogism if I ever heard of one.

X presents an opinion.
X presents evidence.
Therefore, an opinion is evidence.

Any opinion, right or wrong, is strengthened or undermined by the evidence used to support such an opinion.

[Superfly_FR]

Two pages of semantics and rhetorical talk ...

[MarsupilamiX]

Two pages of semantics and rhetorical talk ...

Shouldn't you love that, as it's a French tradition?
From Voltaire, over Balzac to Sartre, all of them loved to talk about semantics!

Posted via CB10

[stabstabdie]

"False facts" has no meaning since a "fact" is by definition true. Do you mean Troy has assembled data which is not correct and thus formed an inaccurate opinion? What do you consider to be the incorrect data that has led to the inaccurate analysis?

Well for starters, inventory write down is very common. Microsoft did $900 million.
BlackBerry did not end relationship with manufacturing partner, it was the other way around. Chen has said no plans to leave hardware market. Etc...

[CairnsRock]

Well for starters, inventory write down is very common. Microsoft did $900 million.
BlackBerry did not end relationship with manufacturing partner, it was the other way around. Chen has said no plans to leave hardware market. Etc...

What else should Chen say. Of course he has no plans. The only plan he has is to build a plan. So, yes, he currently has no plans to leave the hardware market. No lies have been spoken.

[stabstabdie]

What else should Chen say. Of course he has no plans. The only plan he has is to build a plan. So, yes, he currently has no plans to leave the hardware market. No lies have been spoken.

Right. I'm saying this.
You clearly haven't been following the discussion.
I'm arguing that the so called evidence in the OP is inaccurate.

[CairnsRock]

Right. I'm saying this.
You clearly haven't been following the discussion.
I'm arguing that the so called evidence in the OP is inaccurate.

Thank you for explaining to me what I am saying. I have been following the discussion. I just don't share your opinion, which you clearly misunderstand.
Chen has not said that he is leaving the handset business, he also has not said that he is staying in it. I said that he has no plans declared yet.
Also, you clearly misunderstand that this is is a forum and that forums are all about opinions. In fact if you look at the title of the thread the OP very clearly with the very first word said (Opinion)
If you are looking for hard evidence from bbry on anything, good luck with that. I refer you to their many statements wrt Playbook, bb10 on Playbook to name a few of their whoppers.
I happen to agree with the conclusions drawn by the OP from this morass of rumors, innuendoes and semantics. But that is just my opinion. Of course, I no longer believe a word that they say.
No offence intended, just enjoying the discussion which is the whole point.

[stabstabdie]

Oh damn, is that what this is??
I'm pointing out that the information that the opinion has been based on isn't accurate.
In my experience, an opinion based on false information isn't very useful.

[alternator77]

So by op's logic since the chief marketing officer position has been eliminated completely then logically we can conclude they are also exiting the bes10 adoption business since you need to MARKET this to companies.


Also chief operating officer also has been eliminated due to z10 write down hence no more bes10 servers since were following this logic and that is also a PIECE OF HARDWARE and not just software....
Guess there leaving hardware and software.


Ill be back....... got to go make a thread about it.

Posted from a phone....

[TGR1]

So by op's logic since the chief marketing officer position has been eliminated completely then logically we can conclude they are also exiting the bes10 adoption business since you need to MARKET this to companies.

Also chief operating officer also has been eliminated due to z10 write down hence no more bes10 servers since were following this logic and that is also a PIECE OF HARDWARE and not just software....
Guess there leaving hardware and software.

Ill be back....... got to go make a thread about it.

Posted from a phone....

The CxOs were eliminated, not their groups, so obviously operations and marketing do continue. Nonetheless the elimination of C-suite levels is not trivial for a large company like BlackBerry, suggesting a significant shift in top-level strategy. It's far too much work for a CEO to manage all three at full tilt. This strongly suggests that BlackBerry is dialing back marketing and operations. You may be mocking but if drawing up exit strategies your scenario is not impossible: grim as hell and unlikely but not impossible. It will all depend on the numbers, which only the BlackBerry inner circle have access to.

[alternator77]

The CxOs were eliminated, not their groups, so obviously operations and marketing do continue. Nonetheless the elimination of C-suite levels is not trivial for a large company like BlackBerry, suggesting a significant shift in top-level strategy. It's far too much work for a CEO to manage all three at full tilt. This strongly suggests that BlackBerry is dialing back marketing and operations. You may be mocking but if drawing up exit strategies your scenario is not impossible: grim as hell and unlikely but not impossible. It will all depend on the numbers, which only the BlackBerry inner circle have access to.

Exactly my point. There are other people doing marketing at some level but the ops assertion is without these two people the empire will crumble.


Posted from a phone....

[Omnitech]

Nonetheless the elimination of C-suite levels is not trivial for a large company like BlackBerry, suggesting a significant shift in top-level strategy.

There HAS to be a major shift in top-level strategy, or else they would have left the entire company as-is to slowly melt away.

The issue is whether "X" must mean "Y".

Such thongs are typically highly speculative, biased heavily by people's existing biases, self-interest, fantasies, cynicism, and the desire to be a big-shot prognosticator, among other things.

Until someone can produce a credible study that makes it clear that the vast majority of large companies that produce consumer electronics who have ever eliminated a CMO position have completely exited the consumer electronics business, such speculation is worth no more and no less than any of the other speculation proffered by the rest of the ever-expanding crowd of armchair CEOs around here.

[cgk]

There HAS to be a major shift in top-level strategy, or else they would have left the entire company as-is to slowly melt away.

The issue is whether "X" must mean "Y".

Such thongs are typically highly speculative, biased heavily by people's existing biases, self-interest, fantasies, cynicism, and the desire to be a big-shot prognosticator, among other things.

Until someone can produce a credible study that makes it clear that the vast majority of large companies that produce consumer electronics who have ever eliminated a CMO position have completely exited the consumer electronics business, such speculation is worth no more and no less than any of the other speculation proffered by the rest of the ever-expanding crowd of armchair CEOs around here.

Oddly that people who say that never applied to the stock boosters around here - what happened to the $100 party that people bragged they were going to have? Is it now a $7 party?

[Omnitech]

Oddly that people who say that never applied to the stock boosters around here - what happened to the $100 party that people bragged they were going to have? Is it now a $7 party?

I have no idea what you are talking about there. I don't own BBRY stock nor have I ever posted or read anything about some sort of party based on stock price.

The point is simple: someone expects people to take at face value some "facts" that are just the same sort of speculation anyone can make.

I already posted links to people who are the CMOs of some of the largest companies in the world, companies which do not sell consumer products. Hopefully it should be clear now that the simple fact that some particular 3-letter-acronym position was eliminated (and for all we know that could be temporary anyway) simply doesn't automatically mean "OMFG they're exiting the consumer electronics business!!".

THAT is all.

One must wonder about people who spend so much time/energy defending their favorite armchair-CEO-du-jour, whether in fact they just really have some sort of emotional need to push their own "vision" of what is going on with the company.

What we know is this:

1. The company has had somewhat disappointing sales of its new smartphone platform, its revenue and profit is disappointing and its share price is down
2. The CEO of the last 22 months has been removed, a new temporary CEO/chairman has been hired, 2-3 high-profile executives have left or are leaving the company
3. Large-scale layoffs have been announced (ie 40% of workforce), there may have been some termination of hardware manufacturing contracts or at least shrinking of them
4. The company is going to have to change their strategy and do something to revive its fortunes or it will not be around much longer (at least as an integrated / independent entity)
5. What exactly that strategy is (besides previous public announcements under the previous management), is not known to ANYONE in the public, unless they have some sort of insider-information which they are surely not privileged to share here
6. The rest is ALL speculation and anyone trying to present that as "facts" is either dreaming or arrogant

[stabstabdie]

I have no idea what you are talking about there. I don't own BBRY stock nor have I ever posted or read anything about some sort of party based on stock price.

The point is simple: someone expects people to take at face value some "facts" that are just the same sort of speculation anyone can make.

I already posted links to people who are the CMOs of some of the largest companies in the world, companies which do not sell consumer products. Hopefully it should be clear now that the simple fact that some particular 3-letter-acronym position was eliminated (and for all we know that could be temporary anyway) simply doesn't automatically mean "OMFG they're exiting the consumer electronics business!!".

THAT is all.

One must wonder about people who spend so much time/energy defending their favorite armchair-CEO-du-jour, whether in fact they just really have some sort of emotional need to push their own "vision" of what is going on with the company.

What we know is this:

1. The company has had somewhat disappointing sales of its new smartphone platform, its revenue and profit is disappointing and its share price is down
2. The CEO of the last 22 months has been removed, a new temporary CEO/chairman has been hired, 2-3 high-profile executives have left or are leaving the company
3. Large-scale layoffs have been announced (ie 40% of workforce), there may have been some termination of hardware manufacturing contracts or at least shrinking of them
4. The company is going to have to change their strategy and do something to revive its fortunes or it will not be around much longer (at least as an integrated / independent entity)
5. What exactly that strategy is (besides previous public announcements under the previous management), is not known to ANYONE in the public, unless they have some sort of insider-information which they are surely not privileged to share here
6. The rest is ALL speculation and anyone trying to present that as "facts" is either dreaming or arrogant

Bingo

[TGR1]

There HAS to be a major shift in top-level strategy, or else they would have left the entire company as-is to slowly melt away.

The issue is whether "X" must mean "Y".

Such thongs are typically highly speculative, biased heavily by people's existing biases, self-interest, fantasies, cynicism, and the desire to be a big-shot prognosticator, among other things.

Until someone can produce a credible study that makes it clear that the vast majority of large companies that produce consumer electronics who have ever eliminated a CMO position have completely exited the consumer electronics business, such speculation is worth no more and no less than any of the other speculation proffered by the rest of the ever-expanding crowd of armchair CEOs around here.

While such a comprehensive study would be an ideal solution one rarely gets ideal solutions in the real world and by the time it shows up it may be far too late. For those posters interested in observing what is a real-time business case, it's a luxury which to date can't be used. If you are something like a small investor or in provisioning, for example, such speculation may be all that is available and therefore has value. That is why the strength of accompanying evidence is necessary, to allow the reader to make the best possible interpretation as possible given the publically available data.

Of course it's all speculation on all sides but that is the nature of an open discussion. Same kind of stuff happens on MS and Apple fora and in the media. Steve Ballmer had been ridiculed like crazy before he retired, MS's tablet strategy and even their internal politics have been constantly criticized. There is an on-going vocal "Tim Cook in no Jobs, Tim Cook must go" sentiment that really flared up this year when incorrect analyst reports suggested iPhone sales were dropping, and constant interference from some not-so-disinterested investors (Kass, Einhorn, Icahn) that unfortunately has IMO manipulated the stock. I may not agree with many opinions expressed but I also don't think they should be suppressed just because "wah, I don't wanna hear it".

Open discussion is healthy and I fail to see what is wrong with armchair CEOing so long as the discussion is thoughtful. My primary objection is with those who categorically reject any negative or positive argument without presenting any credible reasoning themselves. As I said only the BlackBerry top brass really know the numbers. But there is some na�vet� and some serious willful blindness on this forum that's leading, IMO, to some questionable and overly-optimistic interpretation of comments from BlackBerry, behavior that I have seen consistently displayed over the past many months. That has led to equal and opposite overreaction when the bad news hits and then the silly partisan bickering flares up again. Note I am not downplaying that there are also some IMO overly negative outlooks but I think they are less damaging on the whole. That's a real disservice to BlackBerry. FWIW I think they will survive but in a radically changed and reduced form. More than that I won't speculate on.

[TGR1]

[snip]
The point is simple: someone expects people to take at face value some "facts" that are just the same sort of speculation anyone can make.

[snipped for brevity a list of points that are irrelevant to my reply]
[*]The rest is ALL speculation and anyone trying to present that as "facts" is either dreaming or arrogant

I have no quibble with the rest of your post except that to clarify that presenting an opinion that one believes strongly to be true does not (and SHOULD NOT) mean that it is being presented as a fact.

Despite the derision on semantics expressed in another post, it is a necessary evil in forum posts.

[Troy Tiscareno]

I have no quibble with the rest of your post except that to clarify that presenting an opinion that one believes strongly to be true does not (and SHOULD NOT) mean that it is being presented as a fact.

Despite the derision on semantics expressed in another post, it is a necessary evil in forum posts.

And that's what you're accusing me of, despite the VERY FIRST WORD in this thread title being OPINION. And I have said several times in the following discussion that, yes, this was my opinion.

People are grinding on the CMO/COO issue as if it was the only thing my analysis is based off of, but I gave a list of reasons, which others have even added to, why I drew the conclusions I did.

Still, I'm not a news reporter reporting the news, I'm presenting MY analysis for discussion. I expected it to ruffle some feathers and not to be accepted by many here, and I'm totally fine with that. I'm NOT fine with people saying that I am trying to pass my opinion off as fact when I clearly am not. What I did is PRESENT a list of facts to support my analysis (i.e., opinion). That's how analysis works.

[stabstabdie]

And that's what you're accusing me of, despite the VERY FIRST WORD in this thread title being OPINION. And I have said several times in the following discussion that, yes, this was my opinion.

People are grinding on the CMO/COO issue as if it was the only thing my analysis is based off of, but I gave a list of reasons, which others have even added to, why I drew the conclusions I did.

Still, I'm not a news reporter reporting the news, I'm presenting MY analysis for discussion. I expected it to ruffle some feathers and not to be accepted by many here, and I'm totally fine with that. I'm NOT fine with people saying that I am trying to pass my opinion off as fact when I clearly am not. What I did is PRESENT a list of facts to support my analysis (i.e., opinion). That's how analysis works.

But some of your facts are not facts.
You refuse to acknowledge this point.

[Kimberella]

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?

Yes, one can say its not realistic until the CEO himself states BlackBerry will ONLY focus on software.

Posted via CB10

[missing_K-W]

None of this suggests evidence. It is fragmented marginal suspicions( of which evidence can arise from . ). Op is entitled to his options as am I. My opinion below

Blackberry is an integrated solution. This includes hardware. QNX is the foundation and hardware is a means to monetize this in the mobile computing / communication front.



Posted via CB10

[TGR1]

And that's what you're accusing me of, despite the VERY FIRST WORD in this thread title being OPINION. And I have said several times in the following discussion that, yes, this was my opinion.

People are grinding on the CMO/COO issue as if it was the only thing my analysis is based off of, but I gave a list of reasons, which others have even added to, why I drew the conclusions I did.

Still, I'm not a news reporter reporting the news, I'm presenting MY analysis for discussion. I expected it to ruffle some feathers and not to be accepted by many here, and I'm totally fine with that. I'm NOT fine with people saying that I am trying to pass my opinion off as fact when I clearly am not. What I did is PRESENT a list of facts to support my analysis (i.e., opinion). That's how analysis works.

Did you misquote? I think I have been clear that I understand you have been presenting your opinion only.

[Troy Tiscareno]

Did you misquote? I think I have been clear that I understand you have been presenting your opinion only.

Yes, sorry, that wasn't directed at you.

[Troy Tiscareno]

But some of your facts are not facts.
You refuse to acknowledge this point.

Which are those?