BlackBerry convenes special committee to decide company's future

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
Trading of shares of Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry were halted Monday morning as the firm convened a special committee to explore strategic alternatives, fanning talk of a possible bid to go private in order to fix its problems while out of the public eye.



BlackBerry has been mulling going private in the wake of disappointing sales of its latest flagship products, which most recently resulted in a quarterly loss of $84 million when the company shipped only 2.7 million devices running its latest operating system. The firm announced on Monday that its directors had formed a special committee to ponder BlackBerry's options going forward, though there is no guarantee that this process will result in any particular transaction.

Going private, at least, would remove from BlackBerry's executives the burden of having to justify quarterly performances to shareholders. The company has been continually cutting staff and closing operations in order reduce expenditures, and chief executive Thorsten Heins, along with much of the rest of the company's executive staff, have been under heavy scrutiny in light of BlackBerry's performances.

The staff reductions are a continuation of a months-long process that has seen BlackBerry cutting operations in order to increase efficiencies and scale the company correctly to its user base. In the years before Apple's iPhone and devices running Google's Android OS rose to prominence in the smartphone sector, BlackBerry produced dozens of phone models per year. Recent months have seen the Canadian firm scaling back that production to just three new devices running BlackBerry 10 this year.

Other options available to BlackBerry include a joint venture or a possible sale to another technology company. Lenovo has previously been mentioned as a candidate to acquire BlackBerry, adding a developed smartphone segment much as it did a computing segment when it bought IBM's PC division in 2005. In March of this year, Lenovo's chief executive made headlines with his honesty in telling a French newspaper that acquiring BlackBerry would make sense. The company has not, though, made any public overtures since.

BlackBerry 10 OS is currently in fourth place among mobile operating systems, behind Google's Android, Apple's iOS, and Microsoft's Windows Phone. It holds that position, though, largely due to the fact that there are virtually no other major operating systems currently in wide release. The past quarter saw Windows Phone solidifying its lead over BlackBerry, with Nokia shipping more Windows Phone devices than BlackBerry did smartphones in total.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 57
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Apple Insider?
  • Reply 2 of 57
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Ding... dong... Blackberry is dead.
  • Reply 3 of 57
    dnd0psdnd0ps Posts: 253member


    1 down, 3 to go

  • Reply 4 of 57
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member


    Sell the whole thing to Wal Mart. 


     


    "The fortunes of war", etc. 


     


    ;)

  • Reply 5 of 57
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member
    Samsung should buy them. Seriously.

    It would be better than Tizen, it would get them out of Apple's hair and Android can get used to being on TV remote controls and garage door openers where it belongs.

    Android will never be secure (unless it's a controlled fork) and Google will never relinquish control (so it has to be their controlled fork). Therefore Android will never be a serious contender as an OS in the new world that's evolving around us. Everything is moving to mobile. Until Android can be secure, it's a waste of time for anyone to implement it in anything serious. It's also pretty much a cobbled together nightmare of an OS, whereas Blackberry is secure, and intelligently and purposely designed from the ground up.
  • Reply 6 of 57
    I'd love to know what they end up talking aboot
  • Reply 7 of 57


    They built and sold so much shit all those years it feels like a bad dream ....

  • Reply 8 of 57
    nikiloknikilok Posts: 383member
    gazoobee wrote: »
    Samsung should buy them. Seriously.

    It would be better than Tizen, it would get them out of Apple's hair and Android can get used to being on TV remote controls and garage door openers where it belongs.

    Android will never be secure (unless it's a controlled fork) and Google will never relinquish control (so it has to be their controlled fork). Therefore Android will never be a serious contender as an OS in the new world that's evolving around us. Everything is moving to mobile. Until Android can be secure, it's a waste of time for anyone to implement it in anything serious. It's also pretty much a cobbled together nightmare of an OS, whereas Blackberry is secure, and intelligently and purposely designed from the ground up.

    That's actually a good option for Samsung.
  • Reply 9 of 57

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gazoobee View Post



    Samsung should buy them. Seriously.



    It would be better than Tizen, it would get them out of Apple's hair and Android can get used to being on TV remote controls and garage door openers where it belongs.



    Android will never be secure (unless it's a controlled fork) and Google will never relinquish control (so it has to be their controlled fork). Therefore Android will never be a serious contender as an OS in the new world that's evolving around us. Everything is moving to mobile. Until Android can be secure, it's a waste of time for anyone to implement it in anything serious. It's also pretty much a cobbled together nightmare of an OS, whereas Blackberry is secure, and intelligently and purposely designed from the ground up.


    Could this possibly be an investment for Apple JUST to keep a company like Samsung from buying it also? Not that Apple would actually do anything with it but bury it in it's backyard. More than likely won't happen, but IJS.

  • Reply 10 of 57

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post


    Sell the whole thing to Wal Mart. 


     


    "The fortunes of war", etc. 


     


    ;)



    Complacency! Sad.


     


    In business, If you're not growing, you're dying! 

  • Reply 11 of 57
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    gazoobee wrote: »
    Samsung should buy them. Seriously.

    It would be better than Tizen, it would get them out of Apple's hair and Android can get used to being on TV remote controls and garage door openers where it belongs.

    Android will never be secure (unless it's a controlled fork) and Google will never relinquish control (so it has to be their controlled fork). . . Until Android can be secure, it's a waste of time for anyone to implement it in anything serious.

    http://www.phonearena.com/news/Heres-how-Google-made-95-of-all-Android-devices-more-secure_id45817
    http://www.csoonline.com/article/732794/pentagon-nod-shows-android-can-be-as-secure-as-blackberry
  • Reply 12 of 57
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TechManMike View Post


    Could this possible be a possible investment for Apple JUST to keep a company like Samsung from buying it also? Not that Apple would actually do anything with it but bury it in it's backyard. More than likely won't happen, but IJS.



     


    Well I hate Samsungs products and worse, I think if the company was a person it would be just a despicable human being.  They are immoral, overly aggressive, and they make bad products.   


     


    That being said, I like the idea of having competition and at least two ways of doing something.  Especially because Apple is a US based company, and especially because of their strong support of censorship I would really like to see at least one original, credible, alternative to Apple's products out there.  I don't see it in Android or in Tizen at the moment, so giving Samsung their own original and well designed smartphone platform to base their future offerings on is a good idea IMO.  

  • Reply 14 of 57
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    gazoobee wrote: »
    Disagree.  Read more. :)

    Certainly OK to disagree. Before doing so you could at least read the links you imagine yourself to disagree with. You very obviously didn't have time in the 2 minutes you took to reply to both me and another poster.

    "Read more";)
  • Reply 15 of 57
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    dnd0ps wrote: »
    1 down, 3 to go

    And then what?
  • Reply 16 of 57
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member


    Que the AI trolls predicting the same fate for Apple. But then there's that pesky problem of AAPL being worth about $23 billion more than XOM as of this morning.

  • Reply 17 of 57


    I think the marketplace has decided its future.

  • Reply 18 of 57
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post





    And then what?


     


    Exactly. I'd rather have fierce competition to Apple than an Apple hegemony like Microsoft's in the 90s.

  • Reply 19 of 57
    bilbo63bilbo63 Posts: 285member


    I wouldn't mind seeing Apple buy BB. They are doing some interesting stuff, albeit a little too late in the game. I'd rather see Apple buy them than Samesung.

  • Reply 20 of 57
    jfc1138jfc1138 Posts: 3,090member


    But what about all those nice "lifetime iPhone" users that have "just switched" to BB?

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