12 ms·
BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
- untog 13y agoSlightly misleading title. BlackBerry has assembled a group to look at all future options- including a sale. Seems more likely they'll partner with someone. Or maybe sell off just their hardware business. I think BB as a whole isn't going away just yet.
- racl101 13y agoI think more than 50% of the headlines on HN are misleading and sensationalist. Nobody would want to most the puff pieces here if they had honest titles.
- twerquie 13y agoI think they have stated quite publicly and explicitly: The company is for sale.
- untog 13y agoBlackBerry Ltd.'s board of directors has formed a special committee to explore “strategic alternatives,” including the possible sale of the company. Like I said, a sale is one of the things being considered in a long list of other options. But the title doesn't convey that.
- raganwald 13y agoWhenever they say that, they mean "sale." It's typical BigCo doublespeak. In their minds, they're trying to convey the impression that they have choices, so that when they negotiate the sale they don't have their backs up against the wall. But everyone knows it means "sale."
- sigkill 13y agoTotally agree with you on that one. Especially with strategic alternatives in quotes.
- twerquie 13y agoFrom the actual press release: > These alternatives could include, among others, possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships or alliances, a sale of the Company or other possible transactions. http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/blackberry-board-of-directors-announces-exploration-of-strategic-alternatives-nasdaq-bbry-1819770.htm http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/blackberry-board-of-...
- bodyfour 13y agoI think the most likely endgame is that they'll pull a Nokia: either an outright MSFT purchase or becoming a heavily-subsidized client state. * Microsoft still has plenty of cash, but is facing an existential crisis of losing platform relevance * Their overall mobile marketshare is so low that they can probably throw that cash around with much antitrust attention * They've had a hard time attracting hardware makers other than Nokia. If Nokia stumbles further, the whole phone platform could unravel. * The traditional Blackberry market was enterprises, who probably would be a lot more receptive to the "windows everywhere" story than Nokia's customers ever were. Blackberry's original killer feature was arguably MS Exchange integration.
- jacquesm 13y agoI highly doubt that MS will be the party to bite. BB uses a customized QnX that is about as far away from Windows Phone as you could probably go without doing something really exotic. If that were their route they'd have to drop their investment in QnX, try to adapt all BB software to run under the latest incarnation of Windows Phone rather than to just run Windows Phone on it. BB users are quite particular about their handsets & associated software, much more so than Nokia users ever were. Of course this could be totally wrong but I think the challenges in moving BB to Windows Phone are far more substantial than to get Nokia to convert even if BB is a smaller player.
- bodyfour 13y ago> If that were their route they'd have to drop their investment in QnX Just as Nokia had to drop their investment in Symbian and Maemo > BB users are quite particular about their handsets However they're not particular about BB10 (the QNX one you mention) since most of them aren't even running it. If anything, the fact that they're in the middle of a delicate platform shift makes the parallels with Nokia in 2011 all the more striking. Anyway, its all just idle speculation on my part.
- jacquesm 13y agoThat's a good point. Ok, so maybe MS would be the one to bite. If only to beat out a potential competitor to windows phone and to pick up that slice of the market. Consider me convinced, that might just work out well for them, if they're going to switch anyway it might as well be to a company that is already well represented in the enterprise. How they're going to give those users the blackberry experience is beyond me though, but that would probably not stop an acquisition.
- general_failure 13y agoYahoo is placing a bid. Sorry, couldn't resist.
- btian 13y agoThis is not reddit. Please stick to facts.
- AlexanderDhoore 13y agoThey (or the company that buys them) should license BB10 to others. Like Microsoft does with windows mobile... It's the only path I can see for the blackberry OS to survive. Otherwise they'll be utterly crushed.
- jpswade 13y agoDoes the Blackberry OS need to survive?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- untog 13y agoThey could survive as a services company of sorts. After all, stuff like BBM is what caused them to really take off.
- CaveTech 13y agoThe problem is Blackberry is a hardware manufacturer, so they'd need a huge volume of sales in software to make up what they would lose in hardware. That said, BB10 doesn't really offer anything compelling above Android for manufactures, and additional hardware isn't going to massively change their market share. BB customers have never been driven by cutting edge phones. Their application marketplace is so bad that there's no reason for general consumers to want to buy into the platform. They definitely wouldn't survive a transition to a software company.
- AlexanderDhoore 13y agoSo BB10 is dead then? ... He's dead, Jim. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yXqU-w9U0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yXqU-w9U0]
- jfb 13y agoThe reason their customers buy them has nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with BBM. The only way out for them is as a service provider on alternate (Android, Windows, iOS) platforms. Going private may enable them to continue to do this; any purchaser that makes sense (Microsoft) would be buying their customer list and the BBM brand. Dell buying them would be a Palm goes to HP level farce.
- cjoh 13y agoAt 5 billion dollars of market cap, the company's worth less than what Microsoft paid for Skype. Frankly, Apple or Google should make this purchase just for their federal salesforce alone -- Blackberry knows how to do something those other companies don't do well and that's sell and entrench inside of Governments. That alone is worth billions. Give the iPhone to a Blackberry federal salesperson, and you've got billions.
- at-fates-hands 13y agoThis was true maybe ten years ago, but even the US government is now moving away from Blackberry: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/rim-suffers-fresh-blow-as-us-government-moves-away-from-blackberry-60725 http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/rim-suffers-fresh-blow-... "Research In Motion (RIM) has suffered yet another setback as the General Services Administration (GSA), the US government’s main procurement agency, announced its decision to provide iPhones and Android devices to its employees. Though BlackBerrys will still be available from the agency, the announcement represents a general shift away from reliance on RIM products and a move towards a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy."
- cjoh 13y agoRight. That's basically because employees (I used to work for the gov) want them, much to the CIO's dismay because the CIO is being better served by Blackberry sales folks than Apple's or Google's. By better served, I don't mean "taken out for golf," I mean "contracting vehicles have been set up by BlackBerry's experienced salesforce that makes this IT easy for a CIO to purchase." The SBA and many other agencies just renewed their blackberry contracts because, frankly, it was just easier for them to buy it. If you put an iPhone or an Android device into that existing framework for purchasing, it's game, set, match.
- bane 13y ago> Apple or Google should make this purchase just for their federal salesforce alone... That wouldn't be a good reason for Apple to buy BB, it'd be a money losing proposition for them. The Feds have already moved on to Android phones and reversing that would take years.
- jacquesm 13y agoI really hope they'll do a spin-out of QnX and/or open source it under a license that allows forking. That would be a major move.
- pilgrim689 13y agoQNX is a huge asset to the company, raking it customers worldwide in the embedded/real-time/safety-critical software markets. Open sourcing QNX would be a major move, as in a major loss, indeed!
- jacquesm 13y agoIf QnX is not an asset to the buyer because for instance, they already have an OS offering of their own this might just happen to pacify the various users out there (corporate, governmental). At least like that they could be relieved of the support burden of maintaining two OS's.
- justincormack 13y agoMore likely to sell it or spin it out. A buyer could open source it though.
- icefox 13y agoWhen BlackBerry bought QNX they removed the source code so don't hold your breath.
- beagle3 13y agoWas the QNX source ever available?
- cookingwithrye 13y agoYes, it was available until 2010 - when they were purchased by RIM. See: http://community.qnx.com/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.community/wiki/UpdatedQNXSourceAccessPolicyFAQ?version=2 http://community.qnx.com/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.commun...
- parfe 13y agoI predict blackberry drops the hardware side and moves to a services company supporting Android and iOS.
- mncv89 13y agoCanonical should buy them. It would give them a platform for their Ubuntu OS on phones, instead of trying to use crowd-funding.
- s9ix 13y agoIntroducing the Ubuntu Edge: The world's first triple booting phone, with Ubuntu OS, Android, and BlackBerry 10. That would be awesome.
- Pxtl 13y agoDon't taunt me with such a wonderful fantasy. Blackberry/Ubuntu is just about the only thing that would make me drop Android. Microsoft has always been a good fit for taking over Blackberry, but MS and BB have diverged too far. Google might just pull another Motorola move and buy them up to add to their patent portfolio.
- jpswade 13y agoThis would probably be the worst of both worlds.
- noct 13y agoCanonical has a revenue measured in millions, BlackBerry in billions. Reality aside, it would also make them owners of QNX.
- mtgx 13y agoSomething really cool could come out of Ubuntu Touch and QNX if they could open source it.
- GrinningFool 13y agoNot quite. They've announced they've formed a committee to explore strategic options: sale, partnerships, licensing (and by extension, taking themselves private). The thing that isn't reported here is that they announced the same thing in early 2012 -- though it is the first time they've explicitly mentioned sale, and they now have one specific bank representing them. Also of possible interest is Prem Watsa's withdrawal from the board due to conflict of interest - this may hint at Fairfax's direct involvement in sale or other negotations around taking the company private. In any case, I hope it works out well. With the QNX-based BB10 OS they've caught up to and in some ways surpassed the competition, particularly with recent and upcoming updates. The problem they face is three-fold: the competition is now too firmly entrenched, making it extremely difficult to get consumer and developer mindshare. This is compounded by (and in large part caused by) the fact that they waited so long - their legacy BB OS has rendered them largely irrelevant to most people, and that's a huge hurdle to overcome. Finally, there is a lot of carrier antipathy in the US market. Carriers are doing virtually no supportive marketing, and updates that have rolled out internationally in July won't be out in the US until late September. Competition is heating up in the low-margin areas outside of the US that have typically bolstered their sales. Their future is looking pretty uncertain (and I say this as someone who develops BB apps) - a manufacturing or licensing deal could provide them with what they need to keep going.
- bane 13y ago> This is compounded by (and in large part caused by) the fact that they waited so long - their legacy BB OS has rendered them largely irrelevant to most people, and that's a huge hurdle to overcome. BB users are also a strange lot. The ones I know at least tend to be very conservative about their equipment choice. Hauling around 6 or 7 year old BBs because newer ones move the icons around or they don't like the keyboards or what have you. They want exactly the experience they have right now and nothing else. I've known a half dozen who bought and returned both Androids and iPhones (trying to get with modernity a little) pretty much because they weren't BBs...or at least all of their problems with the other two phones were why this or that wasn't like it was on their BB. This has been a very big problem for Blackberry. They invest in finally modernizing and updating their hardware and software, but everybody who's not already a BB user has moved on, and the ones who've remained don't want the new stuff because it's not just exactly what they already have. Their only chance would have been to capture the non-conservative parts of the market before they left years ago. That boat set sail long ago.
- bane 13y agoProbably worth buying for the patents, sales channels and manufacturing bits. Cut most of software dev and turn them into an Android phone maker...maybe specialize on low powered, ultra long battery life phones of something.
- anonymoushn 13y agoPlease no, BB10 is superior to Android and already runs Android apps.
- seabrookmx 13y ago> Already runs Android apps. Not well. They're sluggish, and no features past Gingerbread are supported.
- HorizonXP 13y agoThat's about to change with the release of 10.2 this September. It supports Android 4.2.2 APIs, and runs them pretty well.
- foobarqux 13y agoDo they support an Android app store? Do they need to be sideloaded?
- HorizonXP 13y agoAndroid apps need to be packaged into a .BAR file (simple tool) and signed with a BlackBerry signing key so it can be submitted to BlackBerry World. There is no Google Play, or Amazon App Store, or any other Android-specific app store. If you don't want to submit to BlackBerry World, you would need to sideload the app. You still need to sign it with a BlackBerry key.
- zmonkeyz 13y agoThat's ok about 30% of devices are probably still on Gingerbread.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoDoes anyone else suspect that Blackberry/RIM's troubles might be something along the lines of what has happened to LavaBit? Wasn't their device/architecture similar to LavaBit's at least in that comm's were sent encrypted to a server either controlled by RIM, or by a third party (individual companies, gov't agencies, etc.) Then, some time in the not-too-distant past, various world governments started making a big conspicuous deal out of getting "lawful access" to those servers. Then, there were a few widely reported reputation damaging service outages. Then, they became unable to design and manufacture a new phone, despite years of experience making Blackberry phones. Given the surveillance controversy, BB ought to be "killing it" as some say, except that new BB10 devices are more like BB branded commodity smartphones, the data is no longer encrypted en-route, and the cost for "secure email" has gone up dramatically, and is licensed separately where it used to be a built-in feature. /tinfoil
- jacquesm 13y agoRIM is Canadian isn't it?
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoYes.
- jfb 13y agoNo, as a moment's thoughtful speculation would make clear. The public information we have about Blackberry neé RIM is entirely sufficient to explain why they're floundering.
- toyg 13y agoWhen governments came knocking, RIM didn't even put up a fight; before Snowden, they were largely considered the last vendor you'd ever choose, if you cared about your privacy from governments. They had the same excruciating soul-search for a new OS as Nokia, once Apple and Google leapfrogged their early-2000s shitty UIs, and then settled for a good platform when it was way too late. So I'd take the tinfoil off...
- rdl 13y agoFor the good of humanity, I hope someone reasonable (Google?) buys the ex-Certicom ECC patents and opens them up (free, ideally, but genuinely easy to license would be ok.)
- troymc 13y agoWhat is ECC, why is it important, and what does Blackberry currently do with their associated patents?
- rdl 13y ago1) y^2 = x^3 + ax + b 2) 2048 < 256 3) ∅
- sigkill 13y agoI got a chuckle because your answer is technically correct although it doesn't help anyone who doesn't know what ECC already is. Nerd!
- dfc 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_curve_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_curve_cryptography I was lucky to see the notice published in the federal register a while ago (6 or 7 years ago atleast) and made a little pocket cash when the market realized that Certichron was undervalued.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- beefxq 13y agoMicrosoft should buy them.
- gummify 13y agoI think Huawei would bid.
- beefxq 13y agoUS Government would block the bid on spying grounds, oh the irony. Takes one to know one I guess.
- sirkneeland 13y agoWestern governments would sooner nationalize BlackBerry than have it sold to a PRC company.
- dannomatic 13y agoAmazon and Blackberry are the ideal fit. Amazon needs to gain independence from Android, they have the marketplace and the muscle to take advantage of all things Blackberry has in it's favour. Remember they have already been in discussions in the past: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2077067/Amazon-looked-buying-BlackBerry-maker-RIM-summer.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2077067/Amazo... Neither MSFT nor Samsung really make sense as purchasers IMHO.
- jfb 13y agoThe hardware business is dead and dusted. Amazon needs a platform to sell you things, not a difficult hardware business. Blackberry's only useful assets are their enterprise software and sales teams; everything else is noise.
- dredmorbius 13y agoAnd patent portfolio. Depending on where Amazon wants to take Kindle, that could be useful.
- jfb 13y agoTrue. And it's not like Amazon doesn't have the money to splash around.
- dannomatic 13y agoAmazon is already in the hardware business and it is far from dead and dusted. Sorry to disagree. The Kindle Fire is a significant component in their business, it's currently running on Android, BB10 is an excellent OS + platform. Makes sense to buy BBRY, port to Kindle, disjoin from one of your biggest competitors and keep or eject the remaining pieces of BBRY hardware available on a case by case basis. The Q10 is a nice piece of hardware and BB10 is a great platform. It's a natural fit and like I mentioned above Amazon was quite interested 18 months ago, I doubt much there has changed except the fact that the market cap for BBRY has fallen since then, making it an even more attractive asset to Amazon.
- thenewway 13y agoAs a Blackberry Z10 owner (who has also owned several generations of iPhones and Nokia's Lumia 920) I think BlackBerry needs to stick it out. The Z10 has a great OS. The touchscreen gestures are ingenious. The Hub (where the email and notifications are) is a fresh innovation. The device in general is well thought out. Also important to note that the Z10 has privacy and encryption features no other phone I know of has. Blackberry has something good, and while Google and Microsoft continue to hemorrhage users because of trust violations, BlackBerry can win back market share. It can happen!
- HorizonXP 13y agoAs an Android developer by day, and a BlackBerry developer by night, it boggles my mind why everyone thinks BB10 is crap, and that no one wants it. Spend 1 week with a BlackBerry Z10 or Q10, and you'll see how great it actually is in comparison to other platforms. Spend some time developing an app for it in Qt and Cascades, and you'll see how great it is to develop for, in comparison to other platforms. People also need to realize that this isn't RIM; that company was big, sluggish, and full of idiots running it. BlackBerry is a much different company now. They're very humbled, and willing to listen to their customers and developers. As an example, I was looking at their Bluetooth APIs a few months ago, trying to figure out how to do out-of-band (OOB) pairing for a client. The APIs existed, but they were marked internal-use-only. I contacted their developer relations team, who put me in touch with the engineers so I could explain my use case. They said they'd review it and let me know. Lo and behold, in the new 10.2 beta SDK, those APIs are now available for all developers to use. It's one anecdotal example, but talk to others in the community and you'll hear many more like it.
- bulltale 13y agoI haven't used BB10 yet, but I am willing to believe you. However, I think the issue is that success on the mobile OS market is determined in a large part by the ecosystem around it. The ecosystem is heavily influenced by network effects (i.e. the more users, the higher the value of the network) en BB is way behind in this aspect. They still have many users but the amount of apps pale in comparison to Apple and Android. If Apple, Android, Windows and BlackBerry would all have started at the same time, we would have seen different results (maybe). But the simple fact remains that BB is very, very late to the game. And once market dominance is reached, as Apple and Android have, competitors can only change that dominance by being dramatically better. And I get the impression that BB10 is somewhat better. And that is not enough.
- bluedino 13y ago>> it boggles my mind why everything thinks BB10 is crap, and that no one wants it The brand is ruined, much like Yahoo, Myspace or AOL.
- 13y ago
- kin 13y agoIs Blackberry synonymous with RIM (Research In Motion)?
- gummify 13y agoThis sucks for Canada. Less than five years ago RIM/BlackBerry's share prices were trading at ~$150, now it's $10! I can see this depressing Canadian start-ups and its tech industry. Like Kodak, the main reasons for BB's downfall was their own human mistakes - complacency, hubris, and arrogance.
- sirkneeland 13y agoActually if you look at the Nokia example, quite the opposite can happen. A large, prominent, "national champion" company absorbs a huge amount of talent. As Nokia has downsized thousands of workers, they released thousands of entrepreneurs and engineers into the Finnish startup ecosystem. It's exciting times in Helsinki nowadays. The same could happen in Waterloo, and in Canada as a whole.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoEvery publicly traded company is always up for sale.
- fingerprinter 13y agoMan, the long sad story of RIM/Blackberry. They should learn something from Samsung, and Samsung should heed the history of RIM. Blackberry made good hardware with terrible, terrible software. Samsung, so far, has focused on hardware and left the software to other people. It has allowed Samsung to focus on their core expertise and grow fast. However, there is always the rumor that Samsung is building Tizen internally. This, IMO, would be a huge mistake. Samsung should focus on phones and leave the software to other people (Android, Ubuntu). Realistically, I think Blackberry could do the same if they focused on their hardware and the enterprise market. If there was a high-riser who was shooting for something in Blackberry, they should be talking to Canonical right now and focus on making Ubuntu enterprise ready on their hardware. They could dominate that market for years.