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.

Comments

Blackberry - only vendor serious about security

[Animats]

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.

Re:Blackberry - only vendor serious about security

[kqs]

Selling your eyeballs and your habits are pretty strictly in Google's and Microsoft's purview.

Yeah, not so much. Though based on news reports they're not not very good at it yet.

Re:Blackberry - only vendor serious about security

[harperska]

iAd is the coolest, most advanced advertising delivery platform not used by anybody.

Outside of North America

[CohibaVancouver]

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.

Re:Outside of North America

[Stormwatch]

That was not Brazil, I assume. I've only seen a Blackberry here once, in some in-store kiosk, years before smartphones became mainstream. Nowadays, everyone has Androids, iPhones, even WP, while Blackberry has vanished.

Re:Only keyboard smartphone

[roc97007]

...and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I can still type significantly faster on a physical Blackberry keyboard than I can on any virtual keyboard. Back when I was carrying Blackberry, the difference between the BB and the touch-only devices seemed to be similar to the difference between a laptop and a tablet. The former is for content creation. The latter is for content consumption.

Re: Blackberry - only vendor serious about securit

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Don't need Amazon appstore; BB can access Google's

[Prune]

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...

Re:Only keyboard smartphone

[harperska]

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.

"more profitable" doesn't mean "making a profit"

[gavron]

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