[Sairos]

But such a marketing campaign would cost in the neighborhood of $1B/year, and that alone more than BB is worth - with no guarantee of success. The board would never approve of such a risk.

BlackBerry as a company is worth around $5 billion.

[curves2000]

I wouldn't bet on it. There is absolutely no reason to think that sales will improve - normally what improves sales is the launch of a new device, and who knows when BB will launch anything? Plus, BB is famous for launching a device near the end of their fiscal quarters, which always leads to "but we have to wait for next quarter to see a full quarter's worth of sales of the new device" - which hasn't seemed to improve anything a quarter later, but "kicks the can down the road" a little longer.

BB's issue is that they don't just have one thing wrong that they can focus on and address when it comes to smartphones - there are about a dozen things wrong, and most of them BB can't do anything about. Perhaps the biggest would be their brand image, which is so bad that IMO it would take several years of sustained, global, EXCELLENT (Apple-quality) marketing to turn around - IF BB could simultaneously fix all of their other issues so that this massive (and massively expensive) marketing campaign wouldn't just be exposing all of BB's other problems. But such a marketing campaign would cost in the neighborhood of $1B/year, and that alone more than BB is worth - with no guarantee of success. The board would never approve of such a risk.

Chen isn't to blame for any of that, though - Mike L is the one who started BB's nosedive - and built BB's original success on a business model that carriers were heavily motivated to undermine. By the time Heins took over, it was too late to pull up, so Heins had only one option: to see the launch of BB10 through and hope for a miracle against all odds. When that miracle didn't appear, Heins was out, BB was put up for sale, and Chen had to step into an unwinnable situation (as far as handsets go, anyway) and salvage what he could. But make no mistake, there was nothing in his power that he could have done to save BB10 - it was doomed long before his first day on the job. Hell, it was doomed before BB bought QNX in 2010, and it was barely a twinkle in Mike L's eye at that point. The three years Mike squandered following the iPhone launch announcement (and arguably, several years before, when he should have been developing a next-gen OS to replace BBOS, which had long been showing signs of reaching its limits) was where BB10 lost. In tech terms, that was a huge window of time when there was still opportunity, and Mike kept BB on the sidelines as Apple and Google raced past, insisting all the while that what customers REALLY wanted was 2G networks with BIS, PKBs, and a crappy web browser, even when every story in the tech press was about smartphones with great cameras, full featured, powerful web browsers, and APPS APPS APPS!

Tony,

I have always really enjoyed reading your posts as you seem very knowledgeable about BlackBerry,tech and the smartphone industry etc. You seem to explain things very well for non tech type's such as myself.

Just wondering if you worked in the industry or have any specific experience on the engineering or manufacturing level. A few posts I have read have been really interesting on some of the behind the scenes stuff that most consumers don't see.

Thanks!

Posted via CB10

[Troy Tiscareno]

BlackBerry as a company is worth around $5 billion.

In theory. In reality, they have about $2B in cash equivalents and debt of $1.25B to Fairfax. Their market cap might be $5B, but to get to that other money, they'd have to start selling off their remaining assets, which would destroy their future.

[Troy Tiscareno]

Tony,

I have always really enjoyed reading your posts as you seem very knowledgeable about BlackBerry,tech and the smartphone industry etc. You seem to explain things very well for non tech type's such as myself.

Just wondering if you worked in the industry or have any specific experience on the engineering or manufacturing level. A few posts I have read have been really interesting on some of the behind the scenes stuff that most consumers don't see.

Thanks!

I've been called "Tony" many times, but my name is actually Troy (as in, the folks whose army was called the Trojans, and fought the Greeks). LOL.

I have never worked for a smartphone company or anything like that, but I've done work for a lot of businesses, many of them manufacturers, and I always tried to absorb every bit of info I could - never know when it would be useful!

I also live in northern California, about 40 miles from Silicon Valley, and had an 18 year career in IT, working with a ton of people who have, at one time or another, worked for companies in the valley - big and small, famous and obscure. I even worked for a fairly famous company there for a short time (the sound card company MediaVision) and another company called DynaCon that made custom robotic X-ray scanners that were used to test cooling pipes in refineries and nuclear power plants.

That doesn't exactly make me an expert or insider or anything like that, just a pretty well-informed layman. I'm something of a tech generalist, but when things catch my interest, I do a lot of reading and research about them, and smartphones happen to be one of those things. I've always like to "peak behind the curtain" and find out how things really work. I'm the proverbial kid who took apart his alarm clock to see what made it tick...

[Sairos]

In theory. In reality, they have about $2B in cash equivalents and debt of $1.25B to Fairfax. Their market cap might be $5B, but to get to that other money, they'd have to start selling off their remaining assets, which would destroy their future.

Yeah but you can't put a $1 Billion Price tag on them.. Asset Valuation is the way to measure a company's worth.. So total assets of around $5 Billion..

They'll never do marketing anyway even if they only need $100/200 Million in marketing.. Chen said he is making around $50 per device, hypothetical but lets stick to that.. So he said marketing heavily won't be really worth it.. I should've included that in my post but I forgot.

His profit margin on hardware is 10%. Marketing is vital but it would be quite destructive to spend on it.. Quite the dilemma actually.

[curves2000]

I've been called "Tony" many times, but my name is actually Troy (as in, the folks whose army was called the Trojans, and fought the Greeks). LOL.

I have never worked for a smartphone company or anything like that, but I've done work for a lot of businesses, many of them manufacturers, and I always tried to absorb every bit of info I could - never know when it would be useful!

I also live in northern California, about 40 miles from Silicon Valley, and had an 18 year career in IT, working with a ton of people who have, at one time or another, worked for companies in the valley - big and small, famous and obscure. I even worked for a fairly famous company there for a short time (the sound card company MediaVision) and another company called DynaCon that made custom robotic X-ray scanners that were used to test cooling pipes in refineries and nuclear power plants.

That doesn't exactly make me an expert or insider or anything like that, just a pretty well-informed layman. I'm something of a tech generalist, but when things catch my interest, I do a lot of reading and research about them, and smartphones happen to be one of those things. I've always like to "peak behind the curtain" and find out how things really work. I'm the proverbial kid who took apart his alarm clock to see what made it tick...

Troy,

My sincere apologies about your name. Should have read it more closely.

As for your experience and posts I sincerely enjoy reading them and hope to continue to on Crackberry.

Cheers

Posted via CB10

[Alain_A]

And when Troy started to write on this platform. people were saying who is this guy that seems to know it all...Lol

[Soulstream]

And when Troy started to write on this platform. people were saying who is this guy that seems to know it all...Lol

And I think it "hurt" a lot when the "naysayers" (the ones that predicted that BB10 would fail) were proven right.

[silversmith75]

They sold more bb10.

#luvmybb10os

[JeepBB]

They sold more bb10.

#luvmybb10os

Given that ASP, you are probably correct that most of those 500k devices sold in the last quarter were BB10 (and BBOS) phones.

That shows what a disaster area the phones have become for BB, and is why people like me wonder why they still bother with Hardware.

So, despite that "victory" over BB Android in device sales, BB10 still isn't coming back...

[JeepBB]

Yeah but you can't put a $1 Billion Price tag on them.. Asset Valuation is the way to measure a company's worth.. So total assets of around $5 Billion..

They'll never do marketing anyway even if they only need $100/200 Million in marketing.. Chen said he is making around $50 per device, hypothetical but lets stick to that.. So he said marketing heavily won't be really worth it.. I should've included that in my post but I forgot.

His profit margin on hardware is 10%. Marketing is vital but it would be quite destructive to spend on it.. Quite the dilemma actually.

There's ready cash, and there's assets.

If you have two bucks in your wallet, it doesn't matter how much your house, car, private jet, etc, etc are worth... you still can't buy a cup of coffee and a hamburger.

You don't liquidate everything you own every time you want to spend cash on a coffee, neither do companies sell off buildings, patents, etc to pay for operating expenditure. BB doesn't have $5 Billion dollars to fund a marketing campaign without liquidating everything first. Which would render the marketing a bit pointless, wouldn't you say?

[Sairos]

There's ready cash, and there's assets.

If you have two bucks in your wallet, it doesn't matter how much your house, car, private jet, etc, etc are worth... you still can't buy a cup of coffee and a hamburger.

You don't liquidate everything you own every time you want to spend cash on a coffee, neither do companies sell off buildings, patents, etc to pay for operating expenditure. BB doesn't have $5 Billion dollars to fund a marketing campaign without liquidating everything first. Which would render the marketing a bit pointless, wouldn't you say?

Why did you take it to something I didn't discuss or point at? I agreed with that.. The marketing point.. I wasn't saying they can market anything..

My discussion was about the company's worth.

You don't measure people's worth based on what they've in their wallet.. otherwise you're probably worth $100.. You calculate all what they own.

Assest Valuation is the proper way to calculate a company's worth.. and its the way that's followed.. So we can't say Blackberry is worth 1 billion.

This is not an opinion. This is the way things are and what companies do before they purchase other companies.

[JeepBB]

Why did you take it to something I didn't discuss or point at? I agreed with that.. The marketing point.. I wasn't saying they can market anything..

My discussion was about the company's worth.

You don't measure people's worth based on what they've in their wallet.. otherwise you're probably worth $100.. You calculate all what they own.

Assest Valuation is the proper way to calculate a company's worth.. and its the way that's followed.. So we can't say Blackberry is worth 1 billion.

This is not an opinion. This is the way things are and what companies do before they purchase other companies.

Whooooosh!

The point is that BB isn't purchasing another company, where consideration of total worth would be applicable.

The point Troy made was that to embark on an effective marketing campaign would take more ready cash than BB have to spend right now. You don't pay for operating expenses out of asset value, just as I don't re-mortgage my house every time I buy a new guitar!

[Sairos]

Whooooosh!

The point is that BB isn't purchasing another company, where consideration of total worth would be applicable.

The point Troy made was that to embark on an effective marketing campaign would take more ready cash than BB have to spend right now. You don't pay for operating expenses out of asset value, just as I don't re-mortgage my house every time I buy a new guitar!

Good God man.. A point which I agree with!! I agree, agree & agree that they can't handle anything in Marketing.. They don't have the money Yes.. Please understand what I'm aiming at..

My Comment was about the company's worth.. he said $1 billion is worth more than BB, which is wrong.. How many times I've to say this? When talking about a company's worth.. You must mention the total assets.. Please its not rocket science.. Ask someone's who works in a bank or knowledgeable in business, tell him How do we calculate a company's WORTH!

If you're getting a divorce and they want to see your worth, do they check how much cash you've, do they check what's in your wallet.. or do they calculate all what you own.. All your assets.

[Sairos]

"An asset valuation is a method of assessing the worth of a company, real property, security, antique or other item of worth. Asset valuation is commonly performed prior to the sale of an asset or prior to purchasing insurance for an asset."

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/assetvaluation.asp

[app_Developer]

Seems you guys are arguing about the hue of white used in the chalk lines of the tennis court!

Troy, IMO, misspoke when he used the word "worth". So what? We all agree a massive advertising campaign is just not feasible for BB.

[Sairos]

Seems you guys are arguing about the hue of white used in the chalk lines of the tennis court!

Troy, IMO, misspoke when he used the word "worth". So what? We all agree a massive advertising campaign is just not feasible for BB.

EXACTLY.. That's what I was aiming at, Just correcting and commenting about the worth thing.. They can't even handle a 100 Million marketing campaign, let alone $1 Billion. I totally agree.

[TGIS]

Expected that, no way they were gonna sell big with the 'berry' boring atmosphere they're creating.

Not again.

Posted via Overheating Z10