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BlackBerry Back In Profit
An anonymous reader sends word that BlackBerry, hit hard over the past several years by the emergence of smart phones, has come back to profitability.
BlackBerry has been fighting an uphill battle to stay relevant in the world of mobile devices. It has lost market share to Apple, companies like Samsung that offer gadgets running on Google's Android operating system, and Microsoft. But John Chen, who took over as CEO in November, has injected new life to the company. Chen, who says BlackBerry is getting close to breaking even on its hardware business, has steered the company's focus more towards software. He's made several product announcements that Wall Street has cheered. Last month, the company launched its Project Ion, an initiative to develop more connected devices ... a trend dubbed the Internet of Things. On Wednesday, BlackBerry reached a deal with Amazon that will let users of BlackBerry's newest operating system access Android apps in Amazon's appstore later this fall.
Blackberry may make a comeback as the "big business smartphone". All the other smartphones are slaves to Apple or Google or a carrier. Blackberry phones are slaves to the enterprise Blackberry server, and Blackberry itself doesn't see phone traffic. Blackberry is the only major vendor serious about security and encryption. Everybody else is into advertising revenue.
The CEO cut his way to profitability. Its an old cheap trick that usually helps only the CEO's bonuses/compensation and in the meantime, hurts the company's long term prospects.
The deal with Amazon? Pfft. BFD.
RIM/Blackberry will be back in the red by year end.
RIM is mostly dead and even Miracle Max can't help them.
I recently got back from a trip to Latin America. Blackerries were *everywhere,* with everyone BBMing like mad. iPhones were almost non-existent, with a smattering of older Android devices. I think we tend to take an America / Western Europe approach when in fact it's apparent that BB remains strong in 'emerging' markets.
Does anyone really think Blackberry has any chance of long-term survival in its current form? A true turnaround can't occur if your revenues are in death spiral and businesses avoid you like a leper.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Right. Super serious about security, enough to give the decryption keys to any country that asks. I feel very safe knowing the Indian and Saudi governments can read any of my messages.
You referred to many aspects of a phone that everyone seems to ignore. I despise calling some of my Android using friends as the call quality on their end is absolute crap, while people can't discern whether I'm on a land line or mobile when they speak to me on my Blackberry Bold or my iPhone 5. I'm sure there are Android phones that have excellent clarity but it seems most people forget about what I consider to be the most important criteria when purchasing a phone. Blackberry has never failed me in that category.
The slashdot headline says "..Back in Profit." Unfortunately not so.
The original article is informative. Under Chen's leadership Blackberry has
increased their profitability so they are no longer losing so much money.
They are, however, NOT PROFITABLE. Their loss prior to some accounting
tricks (that will make the number worse) is $0.11/shr. That means an
investor holding 1000 shares just lost $110 (if he/she sold them).
While profitability as a measure of how well a company performs is good,
and acknowledging that LOSING MILLIONS is a lot better than LOSING
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS (see e.g. Radio Shack)... Blackberry has a
long long way to go.
The article ends with the two avenues Blackberry is pursuing: hardware and
software (how inventive, right?)
- Hardware: they're going to try and create Internet enabled gadgets. As
Blackberry's core hardware competence has always been its bundled
business services this is a big departure. They fight uphill against
Samsung watches, Apple gizmos, Google's Nest, etc.
- Sofware: They bought the right to allow their product to access the
Amazon Play Store (android apps from Amazon only). The win here
is they prove their product REALLY CAN run android apps. The lose
is that instead of opening it up to the Google Play store (most
android apps) they've allowed a limited (by Amazon) subset of apps,
and most designed to siphon extra $$$ and hand them off to Amazon.
This is something we can expect to see Amazon touting as a win in
it's 10Q.
I wish them well. I was surprised by the headline. BlackBerry is
doing well to reduce loss, and less loss is higher profitability, but
they're still chewing threw their cash and unless they stem and
correct that they will be gone.
E
Just use Snap to get full access to Google's Android app store. It's unofficial, but works great. Not all Android apps work, but plenty do. http://redlightoflove.com/snap...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
BTW, that happens to include "friendly" governments like those of the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
That's unpossible
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
Except for all of the content creation that is happening on iPads. There is a lot of content outside of what is best made with a physical qwerty keyboard. It might not be a majority in any field, but it is certainly far from nonexistent and not as simple as the black and white dichotomy sound byte people like to repeat.
Do your Android using friends have high end models like whatever the latest Samsung Galaxy is? Because Android has become the favorite OS for low-end crapphones foisted on people who would have opted for a simple flip phone but are forced into buying a smartphone because nobody makes flip phones anymore. I would not be surprised if those phones sound like crap, but it would be odd if flagship Android phones had poor call quality as well.
My personal phone is a nexus 5. I was given a blackberry z-10 as a work phone. In almost every way I prefer the Android. Better keyboard, better predective text. better sound quality, better screen, better camera...
I do like the blackberry hub, and in some ways I like the Blackberry approach to email.
In summary, I would say the Blackberry is a decent communication device and a crappy pocket computer. The Nexus 5 is an excellent pocket computer and a decent communication device.
I have personally witnessed "content creation" once on an iPad. Just once, so far in their existance.
And you know what... the "sales engineer" looked like a complete retard typing on the thing. Couldn't believe he worked in a development shop because it was like watching a car mechanic type up your invoice details after some repairs; painful. I really wanted to hand him my laptop and ask him to switch to it.
There may be some content being created on tablets, but by and far, it is used for consumption. We have a long way to go before there is going to be vast content created from a tablet (note that a tablet with a kickstand and keyboard don't count). So chastising isn't in order.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
That's why I said "outside of what is best made with a qwerty keyboard". I am not arguing that the iPad is just fine for all content creation. Not all content is typed, and I specifically excluded typing for a reason. For example, I have heard a lot of musical people are performing and composing with iPad apps. In fact, composing on the go can be easier on an iPad than on a laptop, as a qwerty keyboard is definitely not optimized for musical note input whereas an iPad app can display a piano keyboard for input just as easily.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The slashdot headline says "..Back in Profit." Unfortunately not so.
The original article is informative. Under Chen's leadership Blackberry has
increased their profitability so they are no longer losing so much money.
They are, however, NOT PROFITABLE. Their loss prior to some accounting
tricks (that will make the number worse) is $0.11/shr. That means an
investor holding 1000 shares just lost $110 (if he/she sold them).
While profitability as a measure of how well a company performs is good,
and acknowledging that LOSING MILLIONS is a lot better than LOSING
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS (see e.g. Radio Shack)... Blackberry has a
long long way to go.
The article ends with the two avenues Blackberry is pursuing: hardware and
software (how inventive, right?)
- Hardware: they're going to try and create Internet enabled gadgets. As
Blackberry's core hardware competence has always been its bundled
business services this is a big departure. They fight uphill against
Samsung watches, Apple gizmos, Google's Nest, etc.
- Sofware: They bought the right to allow their product to access the
Amazon Play Store (android apps from Amazon only). The win here
is they prove their product REALLY CAN run android apps. The lose
is that instead of opening it up to the Google Play store (most
android apps) they've allowed a limited (by Amazon) subset of apps,
and most designed to siphon extra $$$ and hand them off to Amazon.
This is something we can expect to see Amazon touting as a win in
it's 10Q.
I wish them well. I was surprised by the headline. BlackBerry is
doing well to reduce loss, and less loss is higher profitability, but
they're still chewing threw their cash and unless they stem and
correct that they will be gone.
E
Selling phones below cost and major cost cutting doesn't turn into a positive long term trend. It just gets the CEO paid well for a while, nice golden parachute and lines them up for a job with a company that actually has a chance of surviving.
I like blackberry. Good solid hardware. The OS is far better than ios or android, at least until recently. The security is excellent.
But they rested on their laurels too long and everything they're doing now is too little, too late. I'm sure that certain verticals will keep using their stuff for a while, but the world has moved on.
Of course they're back to profitable. They fired everyone in customer support.
Actually, they can't read all messages. Even RIM can't read all messages.
There are two modes a Blackberry can work in - BES mode and BIS mode. BES mode is when your Blackberry is attached to a Blackberry Enterprise Server machine. What happens in this case is all traffic between your phone and BES is encrypted with a per-device key known only to BES and your phone. While your phone forwards traffic to RIM (or a country server), that traffic is encrypted using that key, and no one handling the traffic between your phone and BES can see it. Basically your phone sends data to RIM, and RIM forwards it onto your BES server, but RIM cannot see the traffic as the keys are held by BES and the phone.
In BIS mode (Blackberry Internet Service, I think) which is the "consumer" mode of operation, RIM etc., hold the keys. Your traffic is encrypted by the phone and decrypted by RIM before being sent on the general Internet (unencypted). The only people who cannot see the traffic is the carriers and gateways between the carrier and RIM.
The country servers that do the decryption can decrypt in this mode as well, for obvious reasons.
It's a fairly secure setup, as long as you're attached to BES. The phones you buy from a carrier and you enter your POP or IMAP information into? Not so much.
The majority of the iPads I see have physical keyboards. I doubt they're as good as my desktop keyboard, but they're a lot more portable.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes