BlackBerry Abandons Sale Plans, Will Replace CEO

An anonymous reader writes "BlackBerry has abandoned plans to sell the company to Fairfax Holdings after the shareholder could not raise enough money. CEO Thorsten Heins is to leave the company. From the article: 'The company also said that Prem Watsa, chairman and CEO of Fairfax, will be appointed Lead Director and chair of the compensation, nomination and governance committee. Mr. Watsa had resigned from the BlackBerry board earlier this year to explore a bid for the company.'"

Comments

Blackberry's back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Back on it's way to catch up to Windows phone sales! Then Apple and Android next. Everyone buy stock now now now!

Re:Blackberry's back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to be pedantic: it's = "it is"; its = possessive pronoun.

Re:Blackberry's back!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about its'? Everybody forgets about its'

Re: Blackberry's back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Never going to happen.

Oh really? What put "losers" like Circa-1986 Apple at the top of that mountain today?

Will humans ever fucking learn from history, or will we continue to be obscenely ignorant and stupid about using words like "never"?

Question abound from the peanut gallery watching the sheeple...

Re:Blackberry's back!

[Rob Riggs]

What about its'? Everybody forgets about its'

I don't always use those three letters and punctuation together in one word, but when I do, I prefer 'tis.

Sure it is off-topic. But you have to admit that this is a far more interesting topic of discussion than the article. Blackberry. Yawn.

Re: Blackberry's back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple had Steve Jobs. And he brought along some of the brightest minds with him from NeXT.
Within 3 month he killed of everything Apple did, replaced it with something new, gutted the products, implanted a very clear and focused vision and put the right people in charge.

BBRY has no one like him. Not even vaguely close. Not by a light year.

BB has no focus, no goal,, no vision, no direction to go.

That's the difference between Apple in the 90s and BBRY.

Re: Blackberry's back!

[narcc]

The same could have been said about Apple circa 1986. "Apple has no focus, no goal,, no vision, no direction to go."

For all we know, in a few years we'll see the triumphant of the former co-CEO's as an important turning point. We'll watch Apple decline and say "Well, Apple doesn't have a Lazaridis. Not even vaguely close. Not by a light year."

Re: Blackberry's back!

[rtb61]

Don't forget Apple had to get all the way down there first and Blackberry still has a ways to go down yet. For all the winners there are losers Epson ( and I ain't talking salt), Palm (no oil there now), Wang (gone all limp now), Gateway (to no where), Apricot (just not fruity enough), Commodore (no ship to sail), to name just a very few. Most crash very very few rebound.

Blind and Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackberry/RIM has been a truly classic example of the blind _and_ stupid leading the poor unfortunate employees who haven't jumped ship yet...

If they think putting themselves on the market and then pulling themselves from the market hasn't hurt their already brutalized image and reputation then they are truly clueless. Blackberry is dead. How much more good money are they going to throw down the toilet?...

Slashdot Abandons Grammar Will Use Runon Sentences

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

semicolon

[noh8rz10]

semicolons are awesome! especially in headlines. The Onion does it well.

Re:semicolon

[UnknowingFool]

I believe that in this case a comma should be used but my Grammar German is rusty. :)

Re:semicolon

[slashmydots]

This is an Onion article apparently. I read it as BlackBerry Abandons Sale Plans Will Replace CEO. They're making an ultra smart phone called The Abandons which is smart enough to replace their CEO so it's going to.

Re:semicolon

[slashmydots]

Now that's interesting, I added certain custom punctuation and the comment system stripped it out without telling me. Maybe Slashdot doesn't support proper punctuation.

Re:semicolon

[kamapuaa]

Commas don't combine sentences unless followed by for, and, not, but, or, yet, or so. A semi-colon would be perfectly appropriate.

Re:semicolon

[noh8rz10]

Thinking about it more, I think a semicolon would be correct if it were a sentence, but a comma would be more commonly used in the headline context.

Re:semicolon

[noh8rz10]

Although the bby headline on the front page of nytimes uses a semicolon so what do I know.

Re:semicolon

[UnknowingFool]

The headline is a sentence. Or at least it is supposed to be. For example, about the exact same subject from Reuters:

BlackBerry calls off sale, will replace CEO

Re:semicolon

[Lil'wombat]

From high school English, there are 31 acceptable uses for a comma. Evil English teacher made us label every comma used in our writing assignments. I no longer have his list but found what appears to be an equivalent list here http://www.grammarly.com/handbook/punctuation/comma/

Re:semicolon

[Hognoxious]

semicolons are awesome! especially in headlines.

Judicious use of uppercase letters is good too.

Re:semicolon

[binarylarry]

Of course they're only doing it because of a rumor that Apple is planning to replace Tim Gift with Siri.

Re:semicolon

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you're in the third grade and also learned that "i before e unless after c" is the law,,, there are many other acceptable uses of a comma that don't follow you're rule.

Now tell us your thoughts on apostrophes!

Re:Sale doesn't solve problem, Shifts it to new ow

[alexander_686]

Maybe. They are pumping a billion dollars into the company. Less than the 2 to 3 billion the buyout would have pumped in but still a large amount.
Then thing about fight or flight.

Selling stock is like voting with your feet. That’s fleeing.

Buy the company and changing the management. That’s fighting. Not a choice for many small investors. The new management might have some brilliant ideas. Or maybe they will just shut down the company and sell the company in chunks. I understand it has a lot of patents.

FTFS vs. FTFA

[HairyNevus]

Summary: "BlackBerry has abandoned plans to sell the company to Fairfax Holdings after the shareholder could not raise enough money."

Article: "In an interview, Mr. Watsa denied reports that Fairfax struggled to raise financing for the $4.7 billion deal. 'Over the history of Fairfax, we've never had a problem lining up financing,' he said. 'There was no question of us being able to raise money. After the due diligence period we didn't think was appropriate for [BlackBerry] to be burdened with debt.'"

Maybe the AC knows something it's not sharing?

Re:FTFS vs. FTFA

[denis-The-menace]

IMO, Prem Watsa is just engineering the price of the stock down while freezing out other potential suitors with that "pays us 30cents/share if you sell to another" clause.

Friday BBRY was at $7.77. Watsa's offer *was* to buy it at $9.00. Today he says "he changed his mind" and then 9:30am, *someone* bought 2.5% of BBRY for $6.46. And tomorrow morning it will happen again. (just watch)

Watsa's Fairfax company is one of those predatory company that buys struggling companies, chops them up and sells the parts for more than the company was worth as a whole.

Mark my words: He will buy BBRY sooner or later and spin off BBM at a price that will cover the purchase price of BBRY as a whole.

Re:FTFS vs. FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

BBM isn't worth X billion. Not anymore. It was before iMessage became ubiquitous for a huge % of smart phone numbers, before WhatsApp became the new BBM, before Google Talk made SMS free for countless others. BBM isn't valuable, nobody is going to pay for the service, it isn't worth X billions in ad impressions.

Re:FTFS vs. FTFA

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Maybe the AC knows something it's not sharing?

More likely its that the AC OP has a reading comprehension issue. I have lost track of how many times someone submits an article here that says basically "not X" and the submitter starts screaming "They said X! They said X!". Since Fairfax is willingly buying some debt, I'm guessing that Fairfax is telling the truth that there was no financing problem.

Re:FTFS vs. FTFA

[WuphonsReach]

before WhatsApp became the new BBM

That's funny... WhatsApp is one of the primary spammers to fill my mailbox each day.

Re:FTFS vs. FTFA

[narcc]

iMessage became ubiquitous for a huge % of smart phone numbers

This is what delusion looks like!

Re:FTFS vs. FTFA

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Blackberry started out as two or 3 special tricks.

1) it was by far the best way to get corporate email in your pocket. The keyboard was a part of this, easiest way to reply.

2) It also had BBM, which in certain places made it special for cutting down SMS costs (SMS has huge huge margins for carriers).

3) Less important, it had excellent battery life, meaning the older phones could go days without a charge.

Now, all of those specialties are gone.

1) EVERYbody does corporate email. Android and iOS have closed the gap, and in some ways eclipsed Blackberry (iOS 7 per-app vpn - a corporate vpn for a special email account/app obviates some of the need for BES, saving cash).

2) iMessage, Line, Whatsapp, google voice/hangouts.. There are so many competitors in this space. iMessage is so much easier to use. BBM userids is so cryptic some say it's "security through obscurity"

3) People would trade off processor speed and flexibility for battery life. Witness the OctoCore processors on some phones now. Or the battery needed to pump some of the 6" plus screens. If battery life was so critical, you'd have small RAM small screen single core devices winning the sales war.

And the biggest that Blackberry never saw coming:

4+) Apple (and android) have shown that people don't want an email device as much as they want a flexible computer in their pocket. Paraphrasing Balmer, "applications, applications, applications....." If you're gonna have a bulky phone, it might as well do a lot.

So, in a turnaround, what's the core competency they can turn to? a physical keyboard is nice, but cuts down screen real estate for non-typing apps. The fact that no major Android manufacturer has a physical keyboard on their showcase phones shows it's not a requirement. Besides, they could add one if needed. Apple never will, and they sold 10 million phones in about a weekend plus.

BlackBerry is toast. There is no way they will keep making phones. They may soldier on selling BES for a bit.

This is a great landscape for Blackberry.

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the NSA stuff going around, Blackberry could market themselves as a phone with complete privacy for your texts. Make a few commercials with people using Android / Apple, and then cut to the NSA reading your text messages and laughing.

Re:This is a great landscape for Blackberry.

[Anonymous Coward]

this is the same company that let the indian and other asian governments have access to customers' data

Re:This is a great landscape for Blackberry.

[TheSpoom]

The truth has no place in marketing.

Re:This is a great landscape for Blackberry.

[ArhcAngel]

this is the same company that let the indian and other asian governments have access to customers' data

This is the only company that fought (for years) to prevent such access. You only heard about it because they fought it. All the other companies complied. And the way they designed the BES not even they can grant India access to that data. But don't let facts get in the way of bashing a company that went to bat for your rights to privacy.

Re:This is a great landscape for Blackberry.

[gl4ss]

hahahahaha.

bb is the original "cloud" messaging company.

Still circling the drain

[sl4shd0rk]

Every time I hear news about Blackberry I hear that gurgling sound the loo makes when it gets a bit too full of water; not sure if it's slowly going down or slowly coming up.

Re:Slashdot Abandons Grammar Will Use Runon Senten

[Anonymous Coward]

Dupe

Good news, bad news for BB

[Minwee]

It looks like Fairfax wasn't able to come up with a DVD full of dollars ($4,700,372,992) to buy the company, but fortunately Blackberry was able to sell the CEO to an unnamed bidder for one billion.

(By the way, Thorsten? Just thought you should know. It's a cook book. Enjoy your trip.)

Re:Sale doesn't solve problem, Shifts it to new ow

[Maury Markowitz]

"They are pumping a billion dollars into the company. Less than the 2 to 3 billion the buyout would have pumped in but still a large amount."

Apple made 10 billion in deferred profits last quarter. DEFERRED profits.

A billion is *not* enough.

English

[Frankie70]

BlackBerry Abandons Sale Plans Will Replace CEO

Random capitalization. No punctuation. 10 year olds could do better.

Re:English

[MysteriousPreacher]

BlackBerry Abandons Sale! Plans? Will, replace CEO!

Who's Will, Samzenpus? Under what authority can he replace the CEO?

Welcome to the farce!

[Chas]

RIMJobber1: What's that flushing sound?
RIMJobber2: Why's there swirly blue water all over the place?
RIM: RUH ROH RAGGY!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It was more like companies abandon BlackBerry

[JoeyRox]

There was no serious bidder for the company. Fairfax's bid was a sham. And the other companies who have been reported to show interest were actually asked by BlackBerry to meet with them and the companies did so only out of courtesy (http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/04/blackberry-buyout-was-always-a-joke).

The Trove

[SuperKendall]

BBM isn't worth X billion. Not anymore.

Patents anyone?

Re:The Trove

[Dzimas]

Agreed. Watsa has a good idea what the patent portfolio is worth, and my suspicion is that he's playing a shrewd game. There are only two scenarios: (1) Blackberry pulls a rabbit out of the hat and manages to scratch out a profit as a minor player in the smartphone game, or (2) Blackberry's hardware business collapses and Watsa manages to get his hands on the company's patent portfolio as a discount.

Re:The Trove

[HornWumpus]

What patent is worth _billions_ for maybe 10 years remaining in force?

It's easy to extort a few million with some crap patent. But Billions? That kind of money makes it worth fighting.

Re:The Trove

[Dzimas]

Blackberry's patents are estimated to be worth up to $3 billion. They are also part of Rockstar Constortium Inc., which purchased Nortel's portfolio of over 4000 patents for $4.5 billion in the summer of 2011, and is currently litigating against major Android handset manufacturers.

Re:The Trove

[HornWumpus]

Any estimates from other than patent litigators?

4.5 billion with 10 years to run on a bunch of patents implies more then 450 million in net license fees/year.

Re:The Trove

[Dzimas]

Sadly, It's not about the license fees. It's about using patent portfolios to suppress the competition.

Re:Holy shit BB is losing it

[sandytaru]

They could hire me, save millions, and I couldn't possibly do a worse job of running the company than they've done.

Thorsten is out...

[prisoner-of-enigma]

...but good luck finding another sucker willing to take his place. The USS Blackberry has been sinking for a long time now. Nothing and nobody is going to save it. Whoever takes the helm at this point will preside over the dissolution of the company, not its revival.

I think everyone in Canada...

[FilmedInNoir]

should get a chance to be CEO of BlackBerry

Re:Sale doesn't solve problem, Shifts it to new ow

[alexander_686]

A billion is *not* enough.

To do what? Don’t leave me hanging. At this point we are comparing apples to berries.

On one hand we are talking about paid in capital. I will point out that Apple only has 20b (plus retain earnings).

On the other hand we are talking about 10b in profits for a large company that is involved in phones, tables, computers, software, etc. verse a medium sized focused company. That indicates that Apple is well run not that 1b could not be wisely spent. I will also point out that when Steve Jobs was hired on the second time Apple’s profits were minuscule compare to Microsoft, Dell, or Intel.

Does anyone think they are still viable?

[sirwired]

At this point, is anyone under the impression that BlackBerry has a viable business plan? It seems to me that their best option would be to liquidate; get what they can for BlackBerry's IP and the remnants of the BES service, and distribute the remaining cash to shareholders. The device business is a wounded and dying animal that at this point is just good money after bad.

There's nothing inherently wrong with BB X, but it was too little, too late, and doesn't present anything that iOS and Android couldn't add in a jiffy if they wanted to.

Re:Does anyone think they are still viable?

[freezin fat guy]

And who spends not only money but huge amounts of valuable TIME developing a new OS and apps when a massively successful OS, and entire mobile software ecosystem, is immediately available to them for free?

What a joke

[Murdoch5]

Blackberry is the laughing stock of companies in ontario, it's a serious face palm to think they're yet again going to try and save one of the biggest failures in Canadian history. This company has been run into the ground by three different CEO's and now a fourth will try and show us how it's done. Blackberry is not a viable phone company, they have crappy, buggy software, out of date and poorly styled hardware and just a lack of innovation at every level. Lets see one more time how bad Blackberry can fail, I'm waiting to hear about the next round of layoff's, of course anyone working for the tech joke who didn't see this coming years ago deserves it, as a coop student I could see it coming like a steam roller, hence why I didn't sign a full time deal with them.

Well, I don't blame them for trying

[sirwired]

BB was never going to make it as Just Another Android Handset Maker if they had tried; that requires a very different corporate culture and organization from one that tries to create something very different.

If they had started (and finished) BB about two or three years earlier, it might have had a chance, but they spent too much time thinking iOS and Android were "consumer toys" and not worthy of their attention.

Re:Blackberries have always been a local feature.

[LordWabbit2]

They were very popular in South Africa a couple years ago. BIS was the main selling point, at the time internet costs were astronomical so being able to send as many messages as you wanted and being able to surf as much as you wanted was hugely attractive. Almost everyone had one, then costs came down, Whatsup and other messaging services started and suddenly people realised they can still have all the goodness without the crap hardware.

I mean seriously, why the fuck does the phone take 3 minutes to boot up?

Why do I have to reboot when I uninstall an app?

Why do I have to pull the goddamn battery out of the fucking phone?

Why is there so much undiluted shit in the "app" market? Seriously, I need a torch, so I thought, "hey download an app and use the flash, worked 100% on my android phone". Yeah right!
EVERY SINGLE APP WANTED TO FUCKING TAKE OVER MY PHONE
Access to contact list, access to data, etc. etc. You're a fucking torch application! You get access to the flash and that's it!

My new Android phone is in the mail (literally) when it arrives I am throwing the crapberry at a wall.