[Omnitech]

Plus, they need time to transition to software-only... [...]

This is the third major CEO communication in which BB's flagship product, BB10, has NOT been mentioned by name.

You contradict yourself.

Any imaginable scenario of BlackBerry's future would include BB10, even if it were licensed to 3rd-party device manufacturers or sold. It would be completely ridiculous for them to kill-off BlackBerry 10 OS, they would be giving up something of quite significant value, in fact I'd argue it would be cause for shareholder lawsuits over breach of fiduciary duty.

Just as you said, it's as much about what they don't say as what they do say that matters.

And the perfect rationale to open the door to even more absurd speculating: "They didn't say X, so X is soooo important!!!"

I furthermore argue that because the Pope did not discuss bestiality in his last encyclical, the Pope must be all about bestiality.

There's gotta be a Monty Python skit in there somewhere.

[lnichols]

.

Should they change who/where/how they build their device, I believe most certifications will have to be submitted again.

Nope BB10 is FIPS approved on any hardware that uses ARMV7 processor
. Almost every smartphone made now uses ARMV7 based processor. The Neutrino version and the crypto kernel version is what gives in the certs. You can view approvals online. BBOS was tied to the phone hardware but BB10 is not.

Posted via CB10

[stabstabdie]

Exactly. Assuming they did keep making handsets, they would be small runs, where the tooling, design, and component costs would force the handset prices much higher - probably in the realm of $1,000 or more each. That *might* be acceptable to certain high-risk customers, at least in the short run, but that also comes with a host of problems:

1. It completely prices consumers out of the market. Who is going to upgrade to the newest BB at $1,000+ per phone? Especially if you have to buy outright, as these won't be sold through carriers.
2. It eliminates most app development, except for custom corporate apps, because what developer is going to develop apps for such a tiny niche?
3. Perhaps the biggest one: it makes BB an even more vulnerable target to other MDM providers, in particular Samsung with Knox (potentially just as end-to-end as BB is, and just as tightly integrated), who could offer lower prices and more attractive handset options, and erode BB's niche.

For mobile devices, the Enterprise market itself has been and continues to be eroded by consumer needs and BYOD, with only a relatively small number of large, risk-averse companies and governments whose need for higher levels of security outweighs the advantages of BYOD and/or the user demand for consumer devices and services (apps, media, etc.). While I don't see Apple making a first-party play into the Enterprise by offering their own MDM, they will continue to add management features into the OS for third parties. More dangerous for BB is that Samsung is making a serious push for BB's key customers with Knox, and is winning a lot of the time, and can only be expected to improve. Given Samsung has the same basic advantage that BB has, with end-to-end control, there's no reason to believe that they won't be successful, and if (when?) that happens, BB's niche will be gone.

You just keep making these insane assumptions.
It gets wilder and wilder each time.

[MarsupilamiX]

You contradict yourself.

Any imaginable scenario of BlackBerry's future would include BB10, even if it were licensed to 3rd-party device manufacturers or sold. It would be completely ridiculous for them to kill-off BlackBerry 10 OS, they would be giving up something of quite significant value, in fact I'd argue it would be cause for shareholder lawsuits over breach of fiduciary duty.

You do know about Nokia and MeeGo/Maemo?
How they spend significant time and financial ressources to develop that new OS, and after having made 3 devices, completely switched to make Windows 8 Phones?

I was a big Nokia fan who even bought a Nokia N9 and thought exactly the same thing you just said:
It would be ridiculous for them to kill it off.
It would be ridiculous for all that time and money to go to waste and the shareholders won't like that.

Well, it happened anyhow...

At this point in time, we can't be sure about what happens with BlackBerry's handset division.
I personally think that it is here to stay until they are broke, but who knows what might happen if the handset division doesn't turn profitable soon.

Posted via CB10

[Omnitech]

You do know about Nokia and MeeGo/Maemo?
How they spend significant time and financial ressources to develop that new OS, and after having made 3 devices, completely switched to make Windows 8 Phones?

And after which, their marketshare in smartphones plummeted.


BB10 is a brand-new and completely independent platform with a lot of room architecturally to grow and improve. Maemo on the other hand was largely built from a standard Linux distribution, there had to be vastly less internal IP development involved with that OS compared to BB10, and it probably would be trivial to clone it. (After all, it's mostly open-source already)

[canuckbear]

Wrong

Posted via CB10

[ElGusta]

You contradict yourself.

Any imaginable scenario of BlackBerry's future would include BB10, even if it were licensed to 3rd-party device manufacturers or sold. It would be completely ridiculous for them to kill-off BlackBerry 10 OS, they would be giving up something of quite significant value, in fact I'd argue it would be cause for shareholder lawsuits over breach of fiduciary duty.





And the perfect rationale to open the door to even more absurd speculating: "They didn't say X, so X is soooo important!!!"

I furthermore argue that because the Pope did not discuss bestiality in his last encyclical, the Pope must be all about bestiality.

There's gotta be a Monty Python skit in there somewhere.

ROFL

Terrible analogy.

When your primary product (bb10) has not been mentioned. And future release dates of new products has not been mentioned there is reason for doubt.

Btw, why bring up beastiality with religion on a mobile tech forum? This is the only feeble analogy you could come up with? This says a lot about you. ROFL.

Terrible.

Disgusting.

[alternator77]

Yeah this thread is full of **** sorry but i just had to say it.


What was the purpose of a BILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT??? If the plan was
"Hey guys ive got a great idea...lets abandon the platform we've spent a crap load of money on building, holding portathons for and signing companies up for and focus on legacy...."
Because it worked so well before.

Op you claim this is just yoyr opinion but here you claim its the true reality



Posted from a phone....

[Gator99]

Just because a couple high paying positions were absolved, does not imply the end of the handset business. I see it as a major cost cutting effort to stop the bleeding, at the source of the wound, which is primarily marketing. I don't believe a sudden marketing blitz (at this point in time) will repair the damage that has already been done.

Sent from the future on my ? Z10

[MarsupilamiX]

And after which, their marketshare in smartphones plummeted.


BB10 is a brand-new and completely independent platform with a lot of room architecturally to grow and improve. Maemo on the other hand was largely built from a standard Linux distribution, there had to be vastly less internal IP development involved with that OS compared to BB10, and it probably would be trivial to clone it. (After all, it's mostly open-source already)

Well, BlackBerry's marketshare already plummeted before BB10, as did Nokia's before Maemo/MeeGo.

Nokia and BlackBerry suffered from the exact same problem when they still had their legacy platform:
An inability to have a good touch centric phone.
The consumer punished both of them.
Nokia went with WP and now got acquired by MS.
BlackBerry tried to sell itself and didn't find a buyer.

BB10 is brand-new, just like WebOs and Maemo/MeeGo has been.
In all three of these OSs went a non-trivial amount of work.
And from these 3, only BB10 is still here.

I personally hope for BB10 and its hardware to get further developed by BlackBerry, but if we look at the past and try to understand what happened to other platforms than Android or iOS, we get a pretty gloomy picture.
Why BB10 should be the anomaly of this market behaviour, is something I fail to realise.

Posted via CB10

[mset]

You contradict yourself.
It would be completely ridiculous for them to kill-off BlackBerry 10 OS, they would be giving up something of quite significant value, in fact I'd argue it would be cause for shareholder lawsuits over breach of fiduciary duty.

Sorry Omni, your posts are generally spot on, but here you're off the mark. You seriously think that with all that's gone on, if Chen decided to kill off BB handsets it would provoke a successful lawsuit? If you believe this, you're not aware of the realities of litigation law in Canada. There is no way in hell that a lawsuit like that would even make it to the courts. Shareholders can think whatever they want, like for example that BB10 is of 'quite significant value'. If a corporation like BBRY decides to kill off a money-losing business, that's the end of the story.

Just because a couple high paying positions were absolved, does not imply the end of the handset business. I see it as a major cost cutting effort to stop the bleeding, at the source of the wound, which is primarily marketing. I don't believe a sudden marketing blitz (at this point in time) will repair the damage that has already been done.

The elimination of CMO and COO as a cost-cutting effort? How many billions is that going to save?

4,000 layoffs at Waterloo. Now that's a cost cutting effort. The elimination of CMO and COO are Chen's message to the rest of the company and to the markets. Make no mistake about that. It had nothing to do with cost-cutting.

[MarsupilamiX]

Yeah this thread is full of **** sorry but i just had to say it.


What was the purpose of a BILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT??? If the plan was
"Hey guys ive got a great idea...lets abandon the platform we've spent a crap load of money on building, holding portathons for and signing companies up for and focus on legacy...."
Because it worked so well before.

Look, I am not agreeing with the OP as a whole, but the 1 billion dollar investment could also be used to get their SaaS business plan to flourish.

What we see when we look at BlackBerry's hardware division, is a typical case of an entrepreneurs dilemma:
Should he terminate a project that already cost billions without the needed ROI, with the goal of cutting losses, or should he further persue his initial strategy in the hope of getting a good ROI in the future?

Suddenly, because of this question, the entrepreneur has to ask himself another question:
Are the opportunity costs too high, if I keep the hardware division instead of going with a SaaS solution, that ditches the hardware division?

The 1 billion could be solely used to get their SaaS division to run at full force, because BlackBerry decided that it's time to cut the losses and that their opportunity costs are just too high when they are not exploring other means of making money.

I am not saying that this will happen, and I also do not desire such a scenario as I like BB10, but the 1 billion dollars can be used for a lot of things, instead of pumping them in the currently money losing hardware division.

Posted via CB10

[MarsupilamiX]

Sorry Omni, your posts are generally spot on, but here you're off the mark. You seriously think that with all that's gone on, if Chen decided to kill off BB handsets it would provoke a successful lawsuit? If you believe this, you're not aware of the realities of litigation law in Canada. There is no way in hell that a lawsuit like that would even make it to the courts. Shareholders can think whatever they want, like for example that BB10 is of 'quite significant value'. If a corporation like BBRY decides to kill off a money-losing business, that's the end of the story.

Here I agree with you.
If BlackBerry decides to do that, I see absolutely no realistic chance of a lawsuit being successful.

The elimination of CMO and COO as a cost-cutting effort? How many billions is that going to save?

4,000 layoffs at Waterloo. Now that's a cost cutting effort. The elimination of CMO and COO are Chen's message to the rest of the company and to the markets. Make no mistake about that. It had nothing to do with cost-cutting.

Here I disagree.
The CMO and COO combined, can earn more than 200 "standard" employees.
Terminating these positions definitely helps you to save costs.

If that was the only motivation behind that move is something I do not know though.

Posted via CB10

[Superfly_FR]

Nope BB10 is FIPS approved on any hardware that uses ARMV7 processor
. Almost every smartphone made now uses ARMV7 based processor. The Neutrino version and the crypto kernel version is what gives in the certs. You can view approvals online. BBOS was tied to the phone hardware but BB10 is not.

Posted via CB10

Thanks for clarifying this. Thought it was "OS and devices", not only OS.

[Superfly_FR]

When your primary product (bb10) has not been mentioned. And future release dates of new products has not been mentioned there is reason for doubt.

Nope, BlackBerry primary product is "mobile computing"; not BB10, not BES, not Devices. It is the SUM of it.
Next *rumored * releases are not expected before 2014 Q2. Way to early to say anything about it.

[Superfly_FR]

CrackBerry Q&A with John Chen, BlackBerry's new CEO! | CrackBerry.com

John: I have to say this Kevin, and you know this very well... what is BlackBerry without the device? The question is, can we do more in that? It’s not about let’s not do this and do that. Sometimes it’s not business sensible to make those statements.

Chen's choice/hiring was not done in 2hrs, he discussed the matter with Watsda & BOD before jumping in.
You don't hire a CEO with "no idea" of what the (his/company) strategy would be. A CEO won't accept a job without guideline or/and white card. I don't believe Chen has a white card: he's a transition CEO.
This means he has the same flexibility than Heins: cards in his hands are not his deal and he's been hired to execute a plan with some flexibility.

The "I can't tell yet" language is an usual tool in this situation. They have to revamp communication and positioning and he will somehow bite his tongue until he can weight every word accordingly.

But if you still believe it means "I don't know" or the exact opposite of these very first words to both CB community and Enterprises ... well, that's your opinion.
have a nice day folks !

[parthokarki]

Well didn't wanted to reply to comment as it looks huge.

The situation and handset stock of BlackBerry doesn't require it to produce more handsets for the time being.

But that doesn't mean people go around beating drum BlackBerry will stop producing handsets to a negative state and emphasis more towards BlackBerry ending.

It will produce when it wil be required to.

The main point here is BlackBerry already has the set of bb10 handsets to sell to the market.

Producing more handsets doesn't make it look any better instead they are focusing on BES 10 and Core OS components and that's good for BlackBerry.

Posted via CB10

[Omnitech]

When your primary product (bb10) has not been mentioned. And future release dates of new products has not been mentioned there is reason for doubt.

First of all, it would be incredibly stupid to be announcing product release dates A) two weeks before earnings release during their "quiet period", B) the interim CEO has only been with the company less than a month, I think announcements about the handset product line are premature until Chen and the rest of the management and officers have a chance to come up with a concrete plan.

I don't think there's much doubt that something will have to change in handsets, but I would think at this point they are evaluating how viable those operations are, including looking for potential manufacturing or licensing partners.

Btw, why bring up beastiality with religion on a mobile tech forum? This is the only feeble analogy you could come up with? This says a lot about you. ROFL.

Terrible.

Disgusting.

I made an analogy that, to me, was just about as absurd as the one the OP and others keep making about the "lack of mention" of handsets. Feel free to ignore my posts if they offend you so much.

[Omnitech]

BB10 is brand-new, just like WebOs and Maemo/MeeGo has been.

Not exactly.

WebOS was brand-new, and marketed by a company that, from the beginning of that project, had almost no money and poor marketing. As a longtime Palm user, I bought a Pre when it first came out and I found it so frustrating it got returned within my 30 day return period. My next device was a BlackBerry Tour, and I stuck with that one.

Maemo was built upon Linux which has been around a very long while (1991), and BB10 is built upon QNX which has been around longer than that. (Early 1980s)

In all three of these OSs went a non-trivial amount of work.

I agree, but Nokia did not have to develop the Linux kernel or the vast majority of basic architecture of what they were building upon. For example they were using X-Windows as the display manager, X-Windows has been around far longer than Linux itself. BlackBerry/QNX developed all of their display technology completely in-house. Just one example of many.

[Omnitech]

Sorry Omni, your posts are generally spot on, but here you're off the mark. You seriously think that with all that's gone on, if Chen decided to kill off BB handsets it would provoke a successful lawsuit? If you believe this, you're not aware of the realities of litigation law in Canada. There is no way in hell that a lawsuit like that would even make it to the courts. Shareholders can think whatever they want, like for example that BB10 is of 'quite significant value'. If a corporation like BBRY decides to kill off a money-losing business, that's the end of the story.

Shareholders sue for all sorts of things, there are several pending against Blackberry at this very moment. Here's one of them:

BLACKBERRY 96 HOUR DEADLINE ALERT: Approximately 96 Hours Remain; Former Louisiana Attorney General and Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC Remind Investors of Deadline in Securities Class Action Lawsuit Against B: Business Wire Business News - MSN Money

The elimination of CMO and COO as a cost-cutting effort? How many billions is that going to save?

I think any public company has to make moves that give the impression that they are doing something substantive to change the direction of a company which has been performing poorly.

Whether or not you or I think that such headline changes are actually important (though of course people on Crackberry have been braying for the heads of those executives for a long time), if you are laying-off 4,000 employees but your executives are still sitting there raking in big bucks, it leaves a poor impression on both the remaining staff and the investor community who may think that A) those people weren't performing to begin with and B) why keep paying them a lot of money for the privilege of doing a poor job?

The company can bring back those positions any time they want.

[mset]

Shareholders sue for all sorts of things, there are several pending against Blackberry at this very moment. Here's one of them:

I'm not sure if this is directed at me, although I'm not sure why it would be. I'm well aware that shareholders sue for all sorts of things... or more accurately, lawyers sue on behalf of shareholders. I've also been following the different actions against BBRY. Just to let you know, most are in the hyper-litigious USA. I reiterate that a lawsuit such as the one you mooted, namely that shareholders could sue BBRY for shutting down BB10 because of some 'perceived loss of future value', will never ever be seen in a Canadian court (or, frankly, in any court anywhere), and doesn't really make sense in light of the fact that this particular part of the business has never been profitable. There are probably a group of shareholders who think the firm should be sued for attempting to proceed with the BB10 effort as opposed to shutting it down permanently.

I think any public company has to make moves that give the impression that they are doing something substantive to change the direction...

I don't think anyone would argue with this.

[mset]

Here I disagree.
The CMO and COO combined, can earn more than 200 "standard" employees.
Terminating these positions definitely helps you to save costs.

If that was the only motivation behind that move is something I do not know though.

Hmmm, a standard employee earns what, $65k? So you're saying that each of them earn $65k x 100 = $6.5MM per year? I'd be surprised if it was that much. I bet base salary is way less for those positions, but options may make up some of the difference. I understand your point, although the savings in salary and future payouts might be outweighed by the golden parachute that they get. I just don't see these two moves as having anything at all to do with cost cutting. I would reiterate that it's a message sent by JC through the firm and to the markets and enterprise clients (that and the fact that in Boulben's case, the individual was in over his head and did a crappy job).

[stabstabdie]

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?

So now what's your next bs argument??
All of you so called 'facts' did not lead you to the correct conclusion.
BlackBerry is continuing to make handsets, and my interpretation of the facts turned out to be more accurate.
In the future, you should be more open to reconsidering your ideas when there facts you claim are shown to be inaccurate, instead of arguing withal literally everyone.
Apology accepted.

[FSeverino]

Well... 'what does the foxxcon say?'

Posted via CB10

[Kobe Barksdale]

Well I'm surprised this thread got this many response. False predictions smh

Posted via CB10