I'm a bit ignorant in this area. What does Good (or BB) offer over a simple Exchange server? Better security? Increased performance?
Good is becoming well established in the mobile enterprise, particularly with regard to iOS devices, and IT departments are accustomed to using it to integrate mobile devices securely with Exchange and Lotus Notes for authenticated workers, enabling mail, network access and messaging while on the move. Blackberry Services have always done the equivalent function for BB devices in the mobile enterprise, so it's clear that this is a move to reinforce their once (or possibly still) dominant market share in this sector.
Ah Soli you said the IBM word.
IBM cf Blackberry.
IBM established player in a strategic alliance with Apple.
Blackberry recent acquirer of GT will have to work extremely hard and quickly to integrate and solidify a position against a giant who is just starting to get rolling.
IMO - no contest. At least with what we've seen from them so far. We'll see, but I'd suspect another meltdown/bloodbath not too far away.
But this play is almost certainly Blackberrys last chance to dance. It'll be interesting to watch this one unfold.
Yes, I did mention them within the scope of dropping their consumer-focused HW and moving to Enterprise solutions. I am saying BB will be the next IBM, that BB's endeavour will succeed (or fail), or that they have kill IBM in order to succeed.
I think there is opportunity waiting to be had, and while we don't typically see it with a failing companies each and every one of these companies statistically have many brilliant people working for them who, if the right circumstances arise, could bring a failure into a future. If, in 5 years, we see BB hovering with a $20 billion market cap and a secure Enterprise niche with decent YoY growth and actual profits because of their Good purchase, I would define that as a win even though it's only a fraction of its former self and pales in comparison to IBM today.
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see." — Arthur Schopenhauer
I'll admit I am not a financial guy, but how does a company that has a market cap of 3.85B down ~ 8% in the last year spend $425M on this?
Other people have made some good points here, but I'd like to add that market cap has little bearing on the activities of the company itself, including the money it controls and what it can or cannot do.
Market cap is just the total value of all outstanding shares of the company. The share price should take into consideration whether or not a company has a lot of cash on the balance sheets, but if the company isn't growing, investors assume that the money will be spent keeping the company going.
In other words, if Blackberry's share price went through the roof on Monday (not likely, of course), the company itself would not have any more money than it does today. Shareholders would get richer, the company itself would not.
The exception to this is when the company first issues shares (the "IPO"). An IPO is when a company sells shares of itself--this money goes straight to the company, and a higher price means more for the company. Unfortunately, banks use access to IPO shares as a way of favoring their best customers, so they advise the company to issue shares at a price which is usually a little lower than what they are probably worth. So the company gets less than it's worth, the bank's favored customers make a quick profit, and the IPO is declared a "success" because the shares went up.
Around 13 or 14 years ago, pre-iPod, Apple's market cap was only a little higher than their cash, because presumably investors thought that the company itself was worth nothing, or perhaps they would need to spend much of that cash to keep the company going.
This kind of situation is what makes leveraged buyouts possible--you essentially buy a controlling interest in the company, then pay yourself back from the bank account of the company you just acquired.
This kind of situation is what makes leveraged buyouts possible--you essentially buy a controlling interest in the company, then pay yourself back from the bank account of the company you just acquired.
Let me see if I understand this. A company, Blackberry in the case, is slowly going out of business. They find a company that has a technology that can conceivably help them, so they buy it with some remaining assets that are left. This of course will also run up the share price of both companies, benefiting the stock holders who will approve the sale.A small number of people from Good, take the $425m in this case and ride off into the sunset. The excutive management of Blackberry takes another big chunk of the newly aquired assets and pays themselves some handsome bonuses for this slick business decision they made. Soon the newly trashed financial condition will cause the stock to drop below where it was before the purchase. Now we have two companies that are undercapitalized and both are now slowly going out of business, because they are being run now by the same incompetent people from Blackberry. This will lead to layoffs and the best people leaving the company.
To equate this to Apple and Next is missing one key point. There is no Steve Jobs involved here. No one at Blackberry is comparable to Jobs.
To equate this to Apple and Next is missing one key point. There is no Steve Jobs involved here. No one at Blackberry is comparable to Jobs.
I honestly don't get these binary comparisons where the argument is "BB isn't getting Steve Jobs so they have no chance of finding some success." There are clearly similarities in their previous innovations in the market, their poor management driving them nearly to dust, their current market cap and Hail Mary purchase price at acquition time that can't be denied. But even without those similarities the fact remains that it's still possible for BB to make some good decisions that prevent from going under like Palm. On top of that, I've read nary a single comment that suggests BB buying Good will make them "the next Apple" so no comment about the-one-and-only Steve Jobs being absent from the deal needs to be stated.
And let's remember that Steve Jobs is still just a man (Is this how religions are started?). Do we know that there as no competent people at BB or Good, or could be hired to make BB a profitable company again? That is not say BB will ever carve out a respectable niche in the Enterprise or even be profitable again, but what do you propose as an alternative to taking a new, bold direction: do nothing at all, or "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"?
I honestly don't get these binary comparisons where the argument is "BB isn't getting Steve Jobs so they have no chance of finding some success." There are clearly similarities in their previous innovations in the market, their poor management driving them nearly to dust, their current market cap and Hail Mary purchase price at acquition time that can't be denied.
... Do we know that there as no competent people at BB or Good, or could be hired to make BB a profitable company again? That is not say BB will ever carve out a respectable niche in the Enterprise or even be profitable again, but what do you propose as an alternative to taking a new, bold direction: do nothing at all, or "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"?
Well, you said the right word (even if it gets used far too much lately): innovations. Apple (after Jobs returned) had a bunch of them. Big ones like OS X, iPod, iPhone and iPad and small ones like own retail outlets, high end laptops and desktops with a design focus, iTunes and the ecosystem and a very unique corporate culture that defied common business wisdom.
Blackberry had none of that. Zip. And after several failed attempts (Torch, Storm, Playbook, BB OS 10, free BES upgrade licensing since almost forever, bringing BB Messenger to all platforms without any return, Passport etc.) their only "positives" are job cuts and shrinking into oblivion to skew the numbers into bearable territory for now. Without a major innovation that disrupts some market (does not have to be phones), there will be no turnaround, just prolonged agony.
Their main investor was pretty clear about a sales price target north of $10 per share to recoup the investments made. This is almost 50% higher than the current valuation. Does anybody seriously see anything in BBs moves that makes that even thinkable? I sure don't.
Well, you said the right word (even if it gets used far too much lately): innovations. Apple (after Jobs returned) had a bunch of them. Big ones like OS X, iPod, iPhone and iPad and small ones like own retail outlets, high end laptops and desktops with a design focus, iTunes and the ecosystem and a very unique corporate culture that defied common business wisdom.
Blackberry had none of that. Zip. And after several failed attempts (Torch, Storm, Playbook, BB OS 10, free BES upgrade licensing since almost forever, bringing BB Messenger to all platforms without any return, Passport etc.) their only "positives" are job cuts and shrinking into oblivion to skew the numbers into bearable territory for now. Without a major innovation that disrupts some market (does not have to be phones), there will be no turnaround, just prolonged agony.
Their main investor was pretty clear about a sales price target north of $10 per share to recoup the investments made. This is almost 50% higher than the current valuation. Does anybody seriously see anything in BBs moves that makes that even thinkable? I sure don't.
:???: You say Apple had all these innovations after Jobs returns (read: after they bought NeXT) and then you say "Blackberry had none of that." How in the hell would Apple aquiring NeXT and Jobs becoming CEO have any barring on Blackberries innovation during that time when we're talking about an acquisition in 2015 from a completely different company? That makes absolutely no sense. If, you mean in regards Good purchase it makes even less sense since Those innovations came after the NeXT purchase and you're comparing them to before they own Good.
This purchase will lead to success or failure on it own and has nothing to do with anything else, especially not Apple, since Apple doesn't compete in that area. The only way I can see about throwing Apple Into this mess is: 1) Apple helping BB because iDevices are so prevalent in the Enterprise and Good is a popular Enterprise SW, or 2) Apple's partnership with IBM helping IBM to gain ground over BB where BB wants to compete in the Enterprise.
Those innovations came after the NeXT purchase and you're comparing them to before they own Good.
This purchase will lead to success or failure on it own and has nothing to do with anything else, especially not Apple, since Apple doesn't compete in that area. The only way I can see about throwing Apple Into this mess is: 1) Apple helping BB because iDevices are so prevalent in the Enterprise and Good is a popular Enterprise SW, or 2) Apple's partnership with IBM helping IBM to gain ground over BB where BB wants to compete in the Enterprise.
Sorry if this was unclear. As I wrote somewhere above, Good has nothing unique or innovative. And they really can't. The MDM/EDM portfolio is defined by two major factors: the APIs the OSs give you for security functionality and the security functionality supported by the backend (Exchange, Lotus, WIndows Server etc.). All MDM vendors access the exact same feature set, there is almost no differentiation between solutions from MS, IBM, SAP, Good, Fixmo, Symantec and more than a dozen others. The big advantage of MS and IBM is that their solutions are perfectly integrated with their existing and widely adopted management and monitoring platforms (like MS System Center and IBM's Tivoli).
Secondly, while Good was the biggest "independent" MDM provider, their customer base is a mere fraction of BBs and BES 10 did already handle iOS and Android without having Good. They have not gained any significant capability here, and at best this is 1+1=2 (with both 1s being loss-making already). And instead of any instant gratification, they are looking at two deficient businesses going into a two-year integration period while the customer base will certainly be shrinking.
Apple helping BB is quite out of the question IMHO. They have an arrangement with IBM, and IBM competes here all the way (they have pretty much everything Good has), while marketing, selling and maintaining Apple's products (nothing BB could do, they can barely do that for their own). And where BB still has some base (like India and Indonesia) iPhones are simply out of the price range for anything but some C-level staff. Agreed, there might be some minor opportunities in US government and military, but Apple's products are there already.
There is a serious conflict of interest with Blackberry buying Good. Good was pretty OS agnostic and developed iOS capabilities early and sustained them. However, with current Blackberry OS and probably adoption of Android or a variant, there is significant interest in deprecating iOS in favor of Blackberry hardware OSes.
Hopefully, alternative security vendors will emerge or this particular purchase comes under regulatory review as anti-competitive.
This give RIM a huge share or monopoly for security services.
Hopefully, alternative security vendors will emerge or this particular purchase comes under regulatory review as anti-competitive.
This give RIM a huge share or monopoly for security services.
They do not need to emerge, there are dozens of them now. And with BBs share of hardware sales, a monopoly can't even be dreamt of.
And there is no "conflict of interest" either. BES 10 did manage iOS and Android devices itself, nothing has changed here. If BB wants to stay relevant in this field, cutting off iOS or Android, which make up almost 100% of devices activated in businesses, would be suicide.
Let me see if I understand this. A company, Blackberry in the case, is slowly going out of business. They find a company that has a technology that can conceivably help them, so they buy it with some remaining assets that are left. This of course will also run up the share price of both companies, benefiting the stock holders who will approve the sale.A small number of people from Good, take the $425m in this case and ride off into the sunset. The excutive management of Blackberry takes another big chunk of the newly aquired assets and pays themselves some handsome bonuses for this slick business decision they made. Soon the newly trashed financial condition will cause the stock to drop below where it was before the purchase. Now we have two companies that are undercapitalized and both are now slowly going out of business, because they are being run now by the same incompetent people from Blackberry. This will lead to layoffs and the best people leaving the company.
To equate this to Apple and Next is missing one key point. There is no Steve Jobs involved here. No one at Blackberry is comparable to Jobs.
Good is privately held, so there is no stock, and as a result they also don't have to publicly release their financials, but I strongly doubt that the terms of the deal included a big sum of cash to be handed over to Blackberry.
According to Yahoo, Blackberry has about 3 billion in cash but about 1.5 billion in debt (I'm assuming USD, but it's not entirely clear), so this represents a pretty big gamble for Blackberry, but if Good is reasonably profitable, it could result in immediate benefits to Blackberry's bottom line, and if they succeed in integrating their business well, that could improve.
But yes, if they end up with not enough cash on hand to keep things going in difficult times, or if the combined firm just ends up being badly managed in other ways, this is a real risk, and if Blackberry goes bankrupt what's left of Good would either be sold off or go down with the ship. The owners of Good already got paid an amount to which they agreed, so they've cashed out and have nothing to lose at this point--the only question is if Blackberry could have put that money to better use in other ways, but we may never know.
Sorry if this was unclear. As I wrote somewhere above, Good has nothing unique or innovative. […]
I still think this is unclear in that you don't seem to qualify this as your belief. You could be correct — you certainly know a lot more about the company than I do — but obviously believes their $425 million investment is worth it. Except for the qualifying you stated your argument clearly, but couldn't there be something BB plans to do with Good that you haven't considered or even know about in terms of Good's IP since they are privately held? Even after the NeXT purchase most thought that Apple buying another "failed" company would do nothing but speed up their demise. Personally I'm hoping BB surprises us all with something that makes them profitable because I really don't want to see them go away even if I never touch another one of the products or services again.
The move makes sense in that it is in line with RIM's avowed movement into pure services, where they still have some clout and are seeking to become more platform-agnostic. RIM's expertise in mobile security will strengthen Good and the latter's expertise in iOS and Android management will benefit Blackberry devices as well.
The move makes sense in that it is in line with RIM's avowed movement into pure services, where they still have some clout and are seeking to become more platform-agnostic. RIM's expertise in mobile security will strengthen Good and the latter's expertise in iOS and Android management will benefit Blackberry devices as well.
Those are nice thoughts, and may be relevant as far as Android is concerned.
Their own OS is already irrelevant at a market share level which means - why bother to pretend that it is or can be anything else, seriously.
Gone, not quite but just about. In a year finished.
Platform agnostic ? Well good luck trying to use that to leverage sales. Yesterday's catch cry. Dead meat.
Apple and iOS ? Nah. They haven't got anything they can add that's not already built in.
So what have Blackberry really got to sell ?
IBM haven't even really started to roll out their initiatives on the sales front. When they do I'm betting they will be compelling and a no brainer for enterprise level customers.
Difficult for Blackberry to compete.
Good is becoming well established in the mobile enterprise, particularly with regard to iOS devices, and IT departments are accustomed to using it to integrate mobile devices securely with Exchange and Lotus Notes for authenticated workers, enabling mail, network access and messaging while on the move. Blackberry Services have always done the equivalent function for BB devices in the mobile enterprise, so it's clear that this is a move to reinforce their once (or possibly still) dominant market share in this sector.
I was wondering about the same thing. But somehow your reply doesn't answer it for me.
What is the advantage of using such software as opposed to using exchange in the mail app, exchanging docs through share point / one drive etc?
The problem here is that this is yesterday's technology. Again BB is running to where the ball was ten minutes ago...
Monolithic MDM solutions were the first step to manage the need to deploy, secure and maintain mobile devices in corporations. Every company with more than a few hundred phones and/or regulatory requirements has done that. We have all seen the shortcomings, the overheads, the complexities. New solutions address a lot of that by eliminating the boundary between devices. Employee X has access to the following software, access to the following file shares locally and remotely, can use the following printers etc ad inf. Wanna maintain that in BES for BB users, Good Technology for iOS and Android users, Windows Server group policies, Exchange and Sharepoint and OneDrive settings for thousands of people? No, you don't. The systems of tomorrow cover all client devices, Macs, PCs, Linux boxes, tablets, smartphones and whatever else with one GUI, one set of rules, one profile per staff member. MS is getting there, IBM is getting there.
Why does that matter for BB? Because they have no experience at all in device management outside of phones. And whenever this integration of BES and GT is done – 2 years if they meet their first deadline in a decade – it will be irrelevant again. The Next purchase helped Apple to define the future, the GT purchase allows BB to chase yesterday.
Can you point me to some of those systems of tomorrow?
I'll admit I am not a financial guy, but how does a company that has a market cap of 3.85B down ~ 8% in the last year spend $425M on this?
You can take a loan of 425M and spend it on the company to buy. Then you'll have in your assets a 425M company and in your liabilities a loan of the same amount.
The question is what and how much collateral they used to secure the loan (no one gives any one money without any guarantees).
The second question is, what synergy could follow out of it? Will they be able to repay the loan with interest because the new company (it's assets e.g. patents or know-how) could be effectively integrated into the BlackBerry's business.
Depending on the estimates (and later real product changes and profits) the market capitalisation will increase or decrease. If the market would estimate that this purchase won't bring anything but costs for the loan - the shares would fall.
Those are nice thoughts, and may be relevant as far as Android is concerned.
Their own OS is already irrelevant at a market share level which means - why bother to pretend that it is or can be anything else, seriously.
Gone, not quite but just about. In a year finished.
Platform agnostic ? Well good luck trying to use that to leverage sales. Yesterday's catch cry. Dead meat.
Apple and iOS ? Nah. They haven't got anything they can add that's not already built in.
So what have Blackberry really got to sell ?
IBM haven't even really started to roll out their initiatives on the sales front. When they do I'm betting they will be compelling and a no brainer for enterprise level customers.
Difficult for Blackberry to compete.
The AppleInsider attitude to market share changes with who has it.
Comments
I'm a bit ignorant in this area. What does Good (or BB) offer over a simple Exchange server? Better security? Increased performance?
Good is becoming well established in the mobile enterprise, particularly with regard to iOS devices, and IT departments are accustomed to using it to integrate mobile devices securely with Exchange and Lotus Notes for authenticated workers, enabling mail, network access and messaging while on the move. Blackberry Services have always done the equivalent function for BB devices in the mobile enterprise, so it's clear that this is a move to reinforce their once (or possibly still) dominant market share in this sector.
No, but it's also not journalism.
Surely, you know this is an unapologetic Apple fan site.
Yes, I did mention them within the scope of dropping their consumer-focused HW and moving to Enterprise solutions. I am saying BB will be the next IBM, that BB's endeavour will succeed (or fail), or that they have kill IBM in order to succeed.
I think there is opportunity waiting to be had, and while we don't typically see it with a failing companies each and every one of these companies statistically have many brilliant people working for them who, if the right circumstances arise, could bring a failure into a future. If, in 5 years, we see BB hovering with a $20 billion market cap and a secure Enterprise niche with decent YoY growth and actual profits because of their Good purchase, I would define that as a win even though it's only a fraction of its former self and pales in comparison to IBM today.
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see." — Arthur Schopenhauer
I'll admit I am not a financial guy, but how does a company that has a market cap of 3.85B down ~ 8% in the last year spend $425M on this?
Other people have made some good points here, but I'd like to add that market cap has little bearing on the activities of the company itself, including the money it controls and what it can or cannot do.
Market cap is just the total value of all outstanding shares of the company. The share price should take into consideration whether or not a company has a lot of cash on the balance sheets, but if the company isn't growing, investors assume that the money will be spent keeping the company going.
In other words, if Blackberry's share price went through the roof on Monday (not likely, of course), the company itself would not have any more money than it does today. Shareholders would get richer, the company itself would not.
The exception to this is when the company first issues shares (the "IPO"). An IPO is when a company sells shares of itself--this money goes straight to the company, and a higher price means more for the company. Unfortunately, banks use access to IPO shares as a way of favoring their best customers, so they advise the company to issue shares at a price which is usually a little lower than what they are probably worth. So the company gets less than it's worth, the bank's favored customers make a quick profit, and the IPO is declared a "success" because the shares went up.
Around 13 or 14 years ago, pre-iPod, Apple's market cap was only a little higher than their cash, because presumably investors thought that the company itself was worth nothing, or perhaps they would need to spend much of that cash to keep the company going.
This kind of situation is what makes leveraged buyouts possible--you essentially buy a controlling interest in the company, then pay yourself back from the bank account of the company you just acquired.
Let me see if I understand this. A company, Blackberry in the case, is slowly going out of business. They find a company that has a technology that can conceivably help them, so they buy it with some remaining assets that are left. This of course will also run up the share price of both companies, benefiting the stock holders who will approve the sale.A small number of people from Good, take the $425m in this case and ride off into the sunset. The excutive management of Blackberry takes another big chunk of the newly aquired assets and pays themselves some handsome bonuses for this slick business decision they made. Soon the newly trashed financial condition will cause the stock to drop below where it was before the purchase. Now we have two companies that are undercapitalized and both are now slowly going out of business, because they are being run now by the same incompetent people from Blackberry. This will lead to layoffs and the best people leaving the company.
To equate this to Apple and Next is missing one key point. There is no Steve Jobs involved here. No one at Blackberry is comparable to Jobs.
I honestly don't get these binary comparisons where the argument is "BB isn't getting Steve Jobs so they have no chance of finding some success." There are clearly similarities in their previous innovations in the market, their poor management driving them nearly to dust, their current market cap and Hail Mary purchase price at acquition time that can't be denied. But even without those similarities the fact remains that it's still possible for BB to make some good decisions that prevent from going under like Palm. On top of that, I've read nary a single comment that suggests BB buying Good will make them "the next Apple" so no comment about the-one-and-only Steve Jobs being absent from the deal needs to be stated.
And let's remember that Steve Jobs is still just a man (Is this how religions are started?). Do we know that there as no competent people at BB or Good, or could be hired to make BB a profitable company again? That is not say BB will ever carve out a respectable niche in the Enterprise or even be profitable again, but what do you propose as an alternative to taking a new, bold direction: do nothing at all, or "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"?
I honestly don't get these binary comparisons where the argument is "BB isn't getting Steve Jobs so they have no chance of finding some success." There are clearly similarities in their previous innovations in the market, their poor management driving them nearly to dust, their current market cap and Hail Mary purchase price at acquition time that can't be denied.
Well, you said the right word (even if it gets used far too much lately): innovations. Apple (after Jobs returned) had a bunch of them. Big ones like OS X, iPod, iPhone and iPad and small ones like own retail outlets, high end laptops and desktops with a design focus, iTunes and the ecosystem and a very unique corporate culture that defied common business wisdom.
Blackberry had none of that. Zip. And after several failed attempts (Torch, Storm, Playbook, BB OS 10, free BES upgrade licensing since almost forever, bringing BB Messenger to all platforms without any return, Passport etc.) their only "positives" are job cuts and shrinking into oblivion to skew the numbers into bearable territory for now. Without a major innovation that disrupts some market (does not have to be phones), there will be no turnaround, just prolonged agony.
Their main investor was pretty clear about a sales price target north of $10 per share to recoup the investments made. This is almost 50% higher than the current valuation. Does anybody seriously see anything in BBs moves that makes that even thinkable? I sure don't.
:???: You say Apple had all these innovations after Jobs returns (read: after they bought NeXT) and then you say "Blackberry had none of that." How in the hell would Apple aquiring NeXT and Jobs becoming CEO have any barring on Blackberries innovation during that time when we're talking about an acquisition in 2015 from a completely different company? That makes absolutely no sense. If, you mean in regards Good purchase it makes even less sense since Those innovations came after the NeXT purchase and you're comparing them to before they own Good.
This purchase will lead to success or failure on it own and has nothing to do with anything else, especially not Apple, since Apple doesn't compete in that area. The only way I can see about throwing Apple Into this mess is: 1) Apple helping BB because iDevices are so prevalent in the Enterprise and Good is a popular Enterprise SW, or 2) Apple's partnership with IBM helping IBM to gain ground over BB where BB wants to compete in the Enterprise.
Those innovations came after the NeXT purchase and you're comparing them to before they own Good.
This purchase will lead to success or failure on it own and has nothing to do with anything else, especially not Apple, since Apple doesn't compete in that area. The only way I can see about throwing Apple Into this mess is: 1) Apple helping BB because iDevices are so prevalent in the Enterprise and Good is a popular Enterprise SW, or 2) Apple's partnership with IBM helping IBM to gain ground over BB where BB wants to compete in the Enterprise.
Sorry if this was unclear. As I wrote somewhere above, Good has nothing unique or innovative. And they really can't. The MDM/EDM portfolio is defined by two major factors: the APIs the OSs give you for security functionality and the security functionality supported by the backend (Exchange, Lotus, WIndows Server etc.). All MDM vendors access the exact same feature set, there is almost no differentiation between solutions from MS, IBM, SAP, Good, Fixmo, Symantec and more than a dozen others. The big advantage of MS and IBM is that their solutions are perfectly integrated with their existing and widely adopted management and monitoring platforms (like MS System Center and IBM's Tivoli).
Secondly, while Good was the biggest "independent" MDM provider, their customer base is a mere fraction of BBs and BES 10 did already handle iOS and Android without having Good. They have not gained any significant capability here, and at best this is 1+1=2 (with both 1s being loss-making already). And instead of any instant gratification, they are looking at two deficient businesses going into a two-year integration period while the customer base will certainly be shrinking.
Apple helping BB is quite out of the question IMHO. They have an arrangement with IBM, and IBM competes here all the way (they have pretty much everything Good has), while marketing, selling and maintaining Apple's products (nothing BB could do, they can barely do that for their own). And where BB still has some base (like India and Indonesia) iPhones are simply out of the price range for anything but some C-level staff. Agreed, there might be some minor opportunities in US government and military, but Apple's products are there already.
Hopefully, alternative security vendors will emerge or this particular purchase comes under regulatory review as anti-competitive.
This give RIM a huge share or monopoly for security services.
Hopefully, alternative security vendors will emerge or this particular purchase comes under regulatory review as anti-competitive.
This give RIM a huge share or monopoly for security services.
They do not need to emerge, there are dozens of them now. And with BBs share of hardware sales, a monopoly can't even be dreamt of.
And there is no "conflict of interest" either. BES 10 did manage iOS and Android devices itself, nothing has changed here. If BB wants to stay relevant in this field, cutting off iOS or Android, which make up almost 100% of devices activated in businesses, would be suicide.
Let me see if I understand this. A company, Blackberry in the case, is slowly going out of business. They find a company that has a technology that can conceivably help them, so they buy it with some remaining assets that are left. This of course will also run up the share price of both companies, benefiting the stock holders who will approve the sale.A small number of people from Good, take the $425m in this case and ride off into the sunset. The excutive management of Blackberry takes another big chunk of the newly aquired assets and pays themselves some handsome bonuses for this slick business decision they made. Soon the newly trashed financial condition will cause the stock to drop below where it was before the purchase. Now we have two companies that are undercapitalized and both are now slowly going out of business, because they are being run now by the same incompetent people from Blackberry. This will lead to layoffs and the best people leaving the company.
To equate this to Apple and Next is missing one key point. There is no Steve Jobs involved here. No one at Blackberry is comparable to Jobs.
Good is privately held, so there is no stock, and as a result they also don't have to publicly release their financials, but I strongly doubt that the terms of the deal included a big sum of cash to be handed over to Blackberry.
According to Yahoo, Blackberry has about 3 billion in cash but about 1.5 billion in debt (I'm assuming USD, but it's not entirely clear), so this represents a pretty big gamble for Blackberry, but if Good is reasonably profitable, it could result in immediate benefits to Blackberry's bottom line, and if they succeed in integrating their business well, that could improve.
But yes, if they end up with not enough cash on hand to keep things going in difficult times, or if the combined firm just ends up being badly managed in other ways, this is a real risk, and if Blackberry goes bankrupt what's left of Good would either be sold off or go down with the ship. The owners of Good already got paid an amount to which they agreed, so they've cashed out and have nothing to lose at this point--the only question is if Blackberry could have put that money to better use in other ways, but we may never know.
I still think this is unclear in that you don't seem to qualify this as your belief. You could be correct — you certainly know a lot more about the company than I do — but obviously believes their $425 million investment is worth it. Except for the qualifying you stated your argument clearly, but couldn't there be something BB plans to do with Good that you haven't considered or even know about in terms of Good's IP since they are privately held? Even after the NeXT purchase most thought that Apple buying another "failed" company would do nothing but speed up their demise. Personally I'm hoping BB surprises us all with something that makes them profitable because I really don't want to see them go away even if I never touch another one of the products or services again.
The move makes sense in that it is in line with RIM's avowed movement into pure services, where they still have some clout and are seeking to become more platform-agnostic. RIM's expertise in mobile security will strengthen Good and the latter's expertise in iOS and Android management will benefit Blackberry devices as well.
Those are nice thoughts, and may be relevant as far as Android is concerned.
Their own OS is already irrelevant at a market share level which means - why bother to pretend that it is or can be anything else, seriously.
Gone, not quite but just about. In a year finished.
Platform agnostic ? Well good luck trying to use that to leverage sales. Yesterday's catch cry. Dead meat.
Apple and iOS ? Nah. They haven't got anything they can add that's not already built in.
So what have Blackberry really got to sell ?
IBM haven't even really started to roll out their initiatives on the sales front. When they do I'm betting they will be compelling and a no brainer for enterprise level customers.
Difficult for Blackberry to compete.
I was wondering about the same thing. But somehow your reply doesn't answer it for me.
What is the advantage of using such software as opposed to using exchange in the mail app, exchanging docs through share point / one drive etc?
Can you point me to some of those systems of tomorrow?
I'll admit I am not a financial guy, but how does a company that has a market cap of 3.85B down ~ 8% in the last year spend $425M on this?
You can take a loan of 425M and spend it on the company to buy. Then you'll have in your assets a 425M company and in your liabilities a loan of the same amount.
The question is what and how much collateral they used to secure the loan (no one gives any one money without any guarantees).
The second question is, what synergy could follow out of it? Will they be able to repay the loan with interest because the new company (it's assets e.g. patents or know-how) could be effectively integrated into the BlackBerry's business.
Depending on the estimates (and later real product changes and profits) the market capitalisation will increase or decrease. If the market would estimate that this purchase won't bring anything but costs for the loan - the shares would fall.
The AppleInsider attitude to market share changes with who has it.