Monday, November 4, 2013

Blackberry: No Takers, Relegated To App Maker Role But Small Chance Of Keeping Hardware Future

Black Monday for Blackberry today. For both the company and its fans.  Apparently, things are so bad there that there are no real takers who believe the company can be turned around and reclaim even part of its former glory.  And that is sad.

And apparently, the patents that Blackberry own do not have the value which many believe should have.  It's surprising because Blackberry is a pioneer in messaging and a trailblazer in smartphones as far as most are concerned.

Today, the CEO of Blackberry, Thorsten Heins, was forced out and it received an injection of $1 billion in investment.  The details aren't that important here.  It's how the investors perceive today's announcement.  Blackberry has apparently taken itself off the market.  And it's uncertain what its turnaround plan is if there is one.  That's the scary part for investors. And this development certain does not inspire confidence among developers and consumers.

There is a possibly a sliver of hope for mobile fans who want Blackberry to stay in the mobile hardware game.  It's new interim CEO, John Chen, believes Blackberry has enough ingredients to continue innovating on the hardware front (http://crackberry.com/blackberry-has-no-plans-shut-down-handset-business).  While that could just be PR talk, I'm also very confident that Blackberry with the right guy at the top could mount some sort of a comeback.  While I don't know if Chen is the right guy or not, certainly the old regime has not produce the results the mobile market had hoped for despite its best efforts.

I think that Blackberry has to change the narrative and get people talk about the future in ways that isn't about its products fighting an uphill battle against mobile juggernauts.  When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he changed the narrative immediately by declaring the PC war over and it's on to the next phase.  Blackberry has to do the same.  It cannot possibly go up against Apple, Google, and Microsoft with a combined cash of around $250 billion.

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