Blackberry Cutting 4500 Jobs (40% of workforce)

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Slava

No, I know that they're not going under here. I guess I just hear about these blackberry outages and figure that I might be screwed if they did go under, or the company was bought and they didn't support the phones anymore. I have no idea. Just debating if now is the time to make the jump to Samsung or something.

I wouldn't be worried about it.

If you jump to anything, make it either a Nexus device (for price, no contract) or an iPhone.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by TurnedTheCorner

Nortel of the new millennium. Moral of the story? Don't bet on Canadian tech.

Nah, it happens in the industry. They had a good run, made lots of people lots of money. It is pretty rare to have decades long staying power in the tech industry, especially when you have a very narrow scope of products.

I have got to think that if there was a buyer out there, they'd have been sold by now, though. Surprised the stock is actually staying as high as it is. I guess enough people think people are still interested in the patents, but it really seems that ship has sailed, and no one is going to buy a company just for the patents again.

The rate they are burning cash though, hard to see them staying operational past a year or two. With this news, things will only snowball worse.

Ironic that the explosion of the smartphone industry killed the market leader (by a long shot) of the smartphone industry.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Actually, the way mail flows for Blackberry, you might actually be hooped.

I really doubt it gets that bad for them though, as I assume (maybe wrongly) that the fees they get from carriers are enough to support that service.

BES 10 uses Active Sync for it's devices so you are fine if you have a Z10. BES 5's will still be kicking around for awhile. I just upgraded one but I suspect anybody who still has an old-fashioned BB probably just has it for work.

For the record, I love my Z10. It's a straight forward phone that I am not tempted to burden with a mess of customization or apps (maybe because there aren't any available har har har) so it just becomes a great and streamlined communication tool with the hub, etc. for both work and personal communication. It's a great work phone with a great form factor and holster. Work is what I need a phone the most for so it fits the bill. I wouldn't have bought one for myself however if it was to be my own personal device.

[photon]

If it gets to the point of shutting down servers, someone would buy them before that one would think.

[cal_guy]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Nah, it happens in the industry. They had a good run, made lots of people lots of money. It is pretty rare to have decades long staying power in the tech industry, especially when you have a very narrow scope of products.

I have got to think that if there was a buyer out there, they'd have been sold by now, though. Surprised the stock is actually staying as high as it is. I guess enough people think people are still interested in the patents, but it really seems that ship has sailed, and no one is going to buy a company just for the patents again.

The rate they are burning cash though, hard to see them staying operational past a year or two. With this news, things will only snowball worse.

Ironic that the explosion of the smartphone industry killed the market leader (by a long shot) of the smartphone industry.

They actually managed to hoard cash pretty well, and nearly all of that $1 billion operating loss was a charge to inventory which is pretty notable considering that Blackberry's inventory was $887 million last quarter. But yeah that narrow focus has torpedo Blackberry and that validates the likes of Google's wide focus. It's crazy that it's been 2 years since RIM's best year in terms of net income.

[FlameOn]

Writing was in the wall years ago and they didn't see it. Having worked at RIM back in 2004-2006 it was filled with former telco managers who were Byzantine in their attitudes and outright dismissed everything the competition was doing off the bat without recognizing the merit. They were Apple levels of arrogance, more inflexible than Apple and without the premium brand following and marketing of Apple. They paid for it and fast.

Sad thing is I know a boat load of great and smart people who may be losing their jobs, although they were all looking last I talked to them back in 2009 so hopefully they all managed to jumped ship by now.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Sad thing is I know a boat load of great and smart people who may be losing their jobs, although they were all looking last I talked to them back in 2009 so hopefully they all managed to jumped ship by now.

I'd like to think that those smart people left a long time ago. Or if they haven't, they'll end up at a better company with better opportunities shortly anyhow.

[chemgear]

Interesting discussion - the "unbelievably bad" seemed a little strange to me though. Did people really expect their sales to be that rosy?

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/black...FnhFVQi4w.html

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

If only Balsille was as interested in running a successful company as he was in trying to buy a hockey team

He doesn't have to worry anymore about the NHL not accepting him as the closest thing the the NHL he can now afford is a WHL or AHL team. It would have been pretty interesting though to see what would have happened if he did buy the Coyotes and move them to Hamilton as he would have likely have to have sold them or get some partnership to keep running the team.

[TorqueDog]

I wonder what his net worth is actually sitting at with their stock being so dreadful.

[chemgear]

He gave up and sold all of his BB a while back:

http://business.financialpost.com/20..._lsa=ab2e-723a

Names of Reporting Persons: James L. Balsillie
Amount beneficially owned: 0
Shared power to vote or to direct the vote: 0
Percent of class: 0%

http://business.financialpost.com/20...get-away-easy/

To be fair, CCGG doesn’t prescribe precisely how much time should elapse before a senior executive like Balsillie could unload shares, but the principle is predicated on keeping some skin in the game. “You shouldn’t be allowed to just quit and cash out,” says Richard Leblanc, associate professor of governance, law and ethics at York University in Toronto. “The board let him jettison all his shares rather than have a staggered period of containment for the sake of the company.”

In any event, it’s not clear at which point in 2012 Balsillie unloaded his shares, but given that BlackBerry’s stock price ranged between $6.22 and $18.32 during the past 52 weeks, he could have fetched between US$166.7-million and US$491-million.

[KTrain]

Share sales halted again.

Looks like they're being sold to a consortium including Fairfax Financial.

[Cheese]

^^^well not so fast...all thats happened is Fairfax has made an offer. Im sure there is a long way to go yet.

Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings is offering to buy Blackberry for US$9 cash for each share it doesn't already own, in a deal that values BlackBerry at about US$4.7 billion.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I wonder what his net worth is actually sitting at with their stock being so dreadful.

He's still very wealthy but nowhere near wealthy enough to own an NHL franchise.

[TurnedTheCorner]

$800M or so net worth according to wiki, but that was in 2011. So yeah, nowhere near that much I'd wager.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by KTrain

Share sales halted again.

Looks like they're being sold to a consortium including Fairfax Financial.

How does play out, I wonder? Hard to see any path to Blackberry making money at this point. Do they think they can make a return by just winding down the company and cashing out?

[Cheese]

Comment from Blackberry

Barbara Stymiest, the Chair of BlackBerry's Board of Directors, says: "The Special Committee is seeking the best available outcome for the Company's constituents, including for shareholders. Importantly, the go-shop process provides an opportunity to determine if there are alternatives superior to the present proposal from the Fairfax consortium."

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by TurnedTheCorner

$800M or so net worth according to wiki, but that was in 2011. So yeah, nowhere near that much I'd wager.

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/art...-fortune-year/

Along the way, co-founders and former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Michael Lazaridis have experienced a heartbreaking drop in their net worths. Balsillie and Lazaridis own 26 million and 30 million shares which at the peak were worth $3.7 billion and $4.3 billion, respectively. Four years later, at $7 a share, Jim Balsillie's net worth has dropped $3.52 billion to $182 million.

If that's true then he wouldn't even be able to cover the cost of purchasing a team let alone maintain and operate it.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Cheese

^^^well not so fast...all thats happened is Fairfax has made an offer. Im sure there is a long way to go yet.

Indeed, they don't even have financing in place for the deal? Have to convince banks for this to be done.

Originally Posted by nfotiu

How does play out, I wonder? Hard to see any path to Blackberry making money at this point. Do they think they can make a return by just winding down the company and cashing out?

Shut 'er down and use the patent portfolio. Try to sue everybody in sight or license the patents to monetize?

[Slava]

Private sale is actually perfect for Blackberry. No more quarterly reports about how many units sold, or how much money they make or lose. Just a straight focus on longer term growth. It lets them do "unsexy" things like focusing on the business networks and applications. They don't have to be concerned with the new iPhone having some feature that they don't, and outselling them during this quarter or anything like that. Its a great move in that perspective.