Blackberry Moves Non-Handset Divisions Into New Business Unit

First time accepted submitter BarbaraHudson (3785311) writes The CBC is reporting that Blackberry has made preparations to abandon the phone market by spinning pieces of the business off into Blackberry Technology Solutions. From the article: "The unit ... includes QNX, the company that BlackBerry acquired and used to develop the operating system that became the platform for its new smartphones, and Certicom, a former independent Toronto-area company with advanced security software. BTS will also include BlackBerry's Project Ion, which is an application platform focused on machine-to-machine Internet technology, Paratek antenna tuning technology and about 44,000 patents." When you have less market share than Windows Phone, it's time to throw in the towel ... or as they say in the new "lets not admit we screwed up" vernacular, "pivot to take advantage of new opportunities."

Comments

Looks like some editorializing by the submitter

[hyades1]

I read TFA, and saw nothing about Blackberry supposedly trying to spin a screw-up as anything else. And I heard one of CBC's tech people discuss this move on CBC Radio 1 today. Again, there was nothing about Blackberry throwing in the towel, even on its handsets. In fact, the new one was reported to be garnering a fair bit of positive feedback. I have no idea whether that's true or not, but that is what was reported on CBC.

I'm not a Blackberry fanboi by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, my current and former phones are Samsung, but the summary offered above is dishonest...plain and simple.

Re:Looks like some editorializing by the submitter

[hyades1]

The summary is inaccurate from the first sentence on. There's a difference between "shifting focus" and "abandoning the market", even in the euphemistic language of business PR types. And the transition Levy was talking about was to a focus on business applications and away from general public, except in certain markets.

Re:Moving valuable assets into one division will h

[narcc]

Blackberry: Gone in a year since 2010

Their demise, I presume, will coincide with the year of the Linux desktop and strong AI.