BlackBerry Board Refused to Break Up Company Despite Interest From Apple, Others

[Windlasher]

Going for new title.

Overheard in RIM Bathroom.

"If we can't have it, Nobody can. Lets screw it up."

"But, we could sell it!"

"Screw that. Lets screw it up"

"But we could sell parts of it?"

"No, I want it really, really, really *********D up"

 

[dBeats]

So it's the "down in a ball of flames" strategy....cool.

 

[Windlasher]

Why doesn't it surprise me one bit that Apple's interest in its intellectual property and patents. see Rockstar lawsuits.

And just why shouldn't they be interested? Everyone else is. Right now its just a race to the bottom to wait for the fire sale!

Kodak, tried that holdout crap too. Didn't work for them, won't work for RIM, only at some point people are going to tire of the game and RIM will be selling those IPs on ebay to the highest bidder.

Actually, not a bad idea now that I think about it.

 

[MacLC]

This is almost certainly a case where the parts of the company are worth more than the whole thing…

You're right but the problem is that for management there's no way to win.
The first problem is that the Canadian government's pride probably won't let BBRY break up until the value drops too far.
The second problem is that nobody wants "breaking up a company" on their record. Even if it's the right thing, if it's the first thing you try, nobody else will want to hire you.
Third, they are so discombobulated that they do not know the value of their parts to sell them. Meanwhile their value drops every day as it ages.
Last, all this new debt makes breakups even harder.

In other words, the reason why the parts are worth more than the whole thing is poor management. Management that antagonized great technology and prevented corporate and product synergy is now antagonizing investors who believe in those individual parts.

I sure hope Apple learns from BBRY's mistakes and does not stagnate with a single cell phone design, meanwhile bleeding market share quarter over quarter and year over year while others diversify and pick up market share... oh wait...

 

[RMo]

Does anybody know what BB's patents are for? (Edit: As far as I can tell, the link doesn't actually say, aside from the fact that Apple and Google have amassed some themselves as well.) In any case, seems to me like those are probably the company's most valuable assets right now. Wonder what the reasoning is for turning these offers down, unless they think they stand a chance in the hardware (and software) realm again.

What's wrong with using the word "and"?

Because it's a headline and function words are often omitted to save space? Just like the word "the," which was also omitted ("the company"). This is fairly standard.

 

[Technarchy]

There's only one frontier left to cross in this game, and it's privacy.

If Blackberry spent all their time and $ developing a truly secure OpenPGP or whatever messaging, email, and voip service, they'd have something unique to sell.

If all they're going to do is make me-too iPhone clones, then they ought to save themselves the trouble and just sell off their IP now, because that market is flooded.

Privacy is a super opportunity and could be massively disruptive. I see lots of companies touting their privacy measures in 2014.

 

[blackpond]

A) let developers get 100% of the sales for, say the first 18 months
B) pay high-profile developers to create exclusives
C) Get contracts in place with 3rd parties for the ecosystem (e.g record labels, film studios, etc).
D) Promote the crap out of it, world wide - without crappy marketing gimmicks like Microsoft attempted. Just simple "this is our product - did you know its got this" style ads.

On point D - telling people what it has will go nowhere. They need to tell them why it has it and why BlackBerry makes phones. People buy on the why, not the what.

Otherwise, great thoughts.

 

[musika]

Good. I want to see some greater effort, even though they're struggling. If they were to break the company up, it'd be boring. Also, we all know what happened with the whole Palm+HP mess. I don't want that to happen again.

 

[marioguarneros]

Then why did Apple, Microsoft and Google all offer to buy only parts of the company? Apple could have bought the entire company and then sold off the parts it has no use for and made money. They didn't so I suspect you are wrong. The parts are not worth more or someone would be acted on that already.

I think you didn't get neither the article nor his comment.

 

[Consultant]

Those who are saying they are dead, apparently don't remember the dark days at apple. One or two great products and they are back in the game. They just have to innovate. However, easier said than done.

A strong blackberry is good for competition/the consumer.

Except that for years, Steve Jobs was working on advanced technology, which was bought out and brought back to Apple.

What company can BlackBerry buy that has such futuristic technology?

 

[reden]

Right now they're worth their patents and a bit more, tomorrow they will only be worth their patents. So, I would be like the instagram guys, take the money and run.

 

[satcomer]

BlackBerry was a player at the point in time when IT managers didn't want Apple products in the office. Unless you were in Advertising. Then parity was reached in terms of performance and reliability (day to day for employees). Apple addressed much of the IT department's concerns regarding enterprise use; scalability, deployment, security, etc. This was the point of BlackBerry's decline.

Nope! Microsoft sold Active Sync to Apple as part of the deal to shore up relations (and Microsoft to make big bank because smart people in Microsoft (Bill was still there) knew it would make big money for them). Once iPhone with Microsoft Active sync came out it was cheaper for tech shops to dump RIM/Blackberry servers since iPhones & windows Phone are now manage straight from the Microsoft Domain Server (2008s2 or better). That was the start of the Death March for the fall of Blackberry.

 

[Fwink!]

Nope! Microsoft sold Active Sync to Apple as part of the deal to shore up relations (and Microsoft to make big bank because smart people in Microsoft (Bill was still there) knew it would make big money for them). Once iPhone with Microsoft Active sync came out it was cheaper for tech shops to dump RIM/Blackberry servers since iPhones & windows Phone are now manage straight from the Microsoft Domain Server (2008s2 or better). That was the start of the Death March for the fall of Blackberry.

Nope? You seem to have supported my statement entirely and added additional detail. lol

 

[twigman08]

Where I've been, is using them. Have you? They're absolutely fantastic. BB's real problem is getting people to give them another shot; if they could achieve that, I don't doubt they could get back into the game as a major player.

Want to know why they can't their "name" out there (but lets be honest it's BlackBerry just about everyone has heard of them)? Because they were WAY WAY too late to the party. Until they offer some "revolutionary" future that has never been seen before on any phone, that changes the way you think a phone should be developers and the general public are going to avoid you.

Developers and the general public do not want to invest their time and money on a platform that is in a straight nose dive and hasn't shown a promising sign of pulling out of it in years.

Oh and yes I have used BB 10. I used to work for a cell carrier as a salesmen. I got to use it as my daily driver for a weekend. While I will admit it did have some things that I did like, in the end I saw nothing on it that could pull customers over and make them switch. I honestly could only recommend it to new customers that were really just now upgrading to a smart phone from their own flip phone. And that was mostly because I had too.

 

[bdkennedy1]

Enjoy the graveyard with Blockbuster. Another company that rested on their laurels thinking no one could beat them.

 

[RedCroissant]

Where I've been, is using them. Have you? They're absolutely fantastic. BB's real problem is getting people to give them another shot; if they could achieve that, I don't doubt they could get back into the game as a major player.

I agree with this completely. I think their problem is the fact that they're going it alone for the most part. They need to partner with someone that has yet to find a powerful partner and then use that partnership to bring them back.

Or maybe they're trying too hard to top the US market when they should be concentrating elsewhere that doesn't have a huge iOS foothold, and then using that renewed popularity to gain more market share in the US again.

 

[RedCroissant]

Enjoy the graveyard with Blockbuster. Another company that rested on their laurels thinking no one could beat them.

I wouldn't necessarily agree with you on this point. I think resting on your laurels and having difficulty quickly adapting after a very long period of incremental change are different things.

Blockbuster took advantage of their business model for a very long time before the online streaming phenomenon took off and they just weren't prepared to compete with those companies that were specializing in it. And I liked Blockbuster. :-(

 

[Vodka]

BBRY is obsolete these days.

Apple had the same period when Steve was retired...I doubt anyone could predict what Apple would become one of the most influential companies in computer/gadget world...they were in such deep hole.
Blackberry's refusal could mean what they have a trump card in their sleeve...

 

[whtrbt7]

Blackberry is in the process of LBO/takeover at this point. I think fairfax ended up supplying debt based financing in order to force the company into action or into insolvency. Once it goes insolvent, they can write off part of the investment/financing in order to hack and slash the company into pieces without having to settle other debts. Since the patents on back end tech and some small pieces of software tech are worth the most, those will probably get sold to the highest bidder. There really isn't a feasible way to salvage the company but to reinvent the company in a category would make the most sense. If they don't get hacked and slashed, Blackberry could probably be another Android hardware design company.

 

[Ironduke]

Is this what they call a RIM job?

 

[JGRE]

You and I didn't read the same article. Either that or we got a completely different understanding of what we read. What I read? The valuable parts (IP and patents) is what other companies were interested in acquiring. No one wanted the other parts.

Contrary to what I bolded from your comment, the parts are exactly what everyone found valuable; not the whole. As for Apple buying the whole company and selling what they don't want... why do you assume they could make money from that? If it's not valuable Apple can't sell those parts for a premium. Well, if they put one of these on the parts they might

Value is ultimately determined by the purchaser. IP and patents are what Blackberry has to offer.

Right, he obviously doesn't understand the difference between a share deal (assets and liabilities) and an assets deal (assets only). You would only do a share deal if you would want to buy BB's whole business, as that is pretty impaired only a fool would do so. So you only do an asset deal, cherry picking the valuable scraps......

 

[nofear1az]

Where I've been, is using them. Have you? They're absolutely fantastic. BB's real problem is getting people to give them another shot; if they could achieve that, I don't doubt they could get back into the game as a major player.

Are you for real! I've used BBs at my company for years and used to swear by them but there is no way you could ever get me to go back. A couple things BBs always sucked at was viewing email attachments and pictures. Yuck! sure, sure the Z10 is leaps and bounds better but I don't think it's any better than the competition.

Good luck on the wishful.

 

[rmatthewware]

So I suppose you've never heard of BB OS 10 or their almost entirely new hardware lineup?

No, and neither have most consumers. This is why they're failing. At this point they'd have to come up with a phone with a holographic, haptic feedback display, a battery that goes a week without a charge, that supports Android, runs Office, and costs 99¢, for anyone to notice. A company in their state can't make a come back by just keeping up. They'd have to be far superior.

 

[9000]

I feel bad for whoever bought their new phone.

----------

Where I've been, is using them. Have you? They're absolutely fantastic. BB's real problem is getting people to give them another shot; if they could achieve that, I don't doubt they could get back into the game as a major player.

I'd say this about AOL, not BB. I don't know why people stopped using AIM. All of my friends still use it somehow, but it's mostly unpopular despite it having apps on almost every platform, having image, file-sending, and AV support, and working so beautifully in iChat.

Oh, and their mail service is as good as any other. Maybe better than and worse than Google in a few tiny ways. This is assuming you're not going to mail.aol.com or gmail.com.

 

[Windlasher]

I feel bad for whoever bought their new phone.

----------



I'd say this about AOL, not BB. I don't know why people stopped using AIM. All of my friends still use it somehow, but it's mostly unpopular despite it having apps on almost every platform, having image, file-sending, and AV support, and working so beautifully in iChat.

Oh, and their mail service is as good as any other. Maybe better than and worse than Google in a few tiny ways. This is assuming you're not going to mail.aol.com or gmail.com.

I bet whomever bought their new phone. None of them was under 40. Same problem with government. Old people hanging on to BS.