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BlackBerry Founders May Try To Take Over the Company
New submitter Adamsobert sends this excerpt from the NY Times:
"In a regulatory filing on Thursday, Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin said that they were considering a bid for the 92 percent of the company that they do not own. ... Their potential bid joins a growing list of expressions of interest in the company, which recently reported a $1 billion quarterly loss caused by the market's rejection of new smartphones that were supposed to revive BlackBerry's prominence. Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto has made a conditional, nonbinding offer to buy the 90 percent of BlackBerry shares it does not own for $9 each. That would value the company at about $4.7 billion."
What's the actual value (not market value, actual value) of BlackBerry? What are they going to get for that ~$5bn? It seems to me BlackBerry aren't competitive in the handset market any more and don't stand any chance of becoming so any time soon. They are pushing BBM for other platforms now, are they trying to pivot and become a messaging company? Again, I don't see how they are competitive or how they will make money.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Not that I see Mike Lazaridis or Douglas Fregin as a Steve Jobs, but the same could be said about Jobs when he returned to Apple. Sometimes, leaving and coming back is a good thing. It can provide a unique perspective.
Make it the safest telephone ever.
With heavy encryption, plugins for blocking all data harvesters and no NSA eaves dropping.
Since it is a non-US based company, it should be possible.
I would already be happy with a low-app, low-cost monochrome e-ink phone with extreme battery life, as long as it is very secure.
Just for business communication. That's what blackberry should be used for. Stay in that market niche.
Then I'll read Facebook and Twitter on my other, bloated, battery draining spyware infested color telephone.
Or combine both systems into one, but remember to keep the data channels physically separated.
You realize that Mike Lazaridis only just resigned from the board only like 7 months ago, right? Jobs was gone from Apple for more than a decade. The two situations are hardly comparable.
Jobs also setup NeXT after leaving Apple, proving he could make another company selling nicely designed expensive GUI systems :-)
Lazaridis is insane... why would he believe he could run BlackBerry any better today than he did before?
I knew I should have shorted them the day the iPhone was announced...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I knew I should have shorted them the day the iPhone was announced...
-jcr
Their share price dropped from an all time high at around that very time, but blackberry continued to grow for three more years. What killed blackberry was not the iPhone, but poor decisions, like its ill fated tablet, and its late blackberry 10 operating system.
He also basically failed at that, NeXT was in trouble when Apple acquired them (as was Apple).
It's funny how two failing companies combined and turned into such a hugely successful one.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
>SJ spent the decade he was gone designing an OS that would become OS X and iOS
No he didn't. Jobs wasn't a designer. What he did was assemble teams of people who did good design for him. Where he excelled, if anything was recognising good stuff when he sees it and pushing hard on mediocre stuff until it was good.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
...and a huge amount of bloat as a company that only produces ONE product! About 5-6 years ago I used to spend many weekends (dating my future wife) in Waterloo, Ontario, where the BlackBerry/RIM's headquarters are located. I was always amazed at just how many buildings were scattered around the city just dedicated to RIM. It always seemed excessive to me!
Fast-forward to today. I was driving to work in Mississauga, Ontario (about an hour east of Waterloo) and decided to take a different route for the first time. To my surprise I saw two huge BlackBerry building that looked like they were no more than a few years old. I can only imagine this is the tip of the iceberg as to the properties, corporate jets, and huge amounts of staff they still have and are in desperate need of shedding as they are burning through cash like crazy and have almost nothing to show for it.
If Mike Lazaridis were to come back that would be the kiss of death for them - the nail in the coffin. Let's remember who was on the board (along with Ballsillie) during the times that allowed the company to a) grow massively b) fail to innovate and c) put all their eggs in one basket. Then when times got tough, both of them chickened out, sold shares and took the money and ran. Mike Lazaridis might be smart engineer who is good at technology and ceasing opportunities but is likely a lousy businessman and innovator.
BB doesn't need better hardware or better technology - they need a better leader who innovates, inspires and can see into the future much like Jobs, Page/Brin, etc. I am afraid it's far too late to save the company as they are at least one generation behind everything and have an abysmal market share. They may be good at doing email but that is very easy technology to implement/copy in other devices. Honestly the best thing that could happen to them at this point would be if somebody like Google or Micro$oft bought them for their patents and IP.
It is very sad what has happened to them and all the employees who have lost or are loosing their jobs but their downfall is almost entirely their own fault due to their arrogance, failure to innovate and lack of product diversification.
Cool story. Would be a lot cooler if you didn't work for Blackberry. It's not like you hide your identity well Aaron Wiebe.
I don't have an e-dog in this e-fight, but c'mon, why don't you address his points (and debunk them if you have the arguments to do so) instead of launching an ad-hominem?
I live in Waterloo, and have many friends who work/worked there.
Before people think that an acquisition by the founder would save the company, please read the following in depth article: How Blackberry blew it: the inside story.
While Apple and Google were building an ecosystem of developers writing thousands of apps, and a central repository for those apps, Lazarides was still focusing on battery life and a physical keyboard, and failed to see why Apple and Google were becoming so popular.
Blackberry is resigned to the fate of being #4 platform for mobile, after Google, Apple, and yes, Microsoft, with low single digit market share after being #1 before smart phones with touch screens and app store/markets.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Maybe Michael Dell can put in his two-cents on how to turn the company around.
...should come up with a stripped down extra secure Android smartphone, with two profiles - a fully encrypted super secure profile for business and another for rest of the nonsense.
There is a market for the above, and they have to tom-tom "this phone will not spy on you". (Its a meaningless slogan, but might work.)
They did have the two profile version with the new phone, but the OS needs to be Android. They already have the hardware.
Tat Tvam Asi