BlackBerry's turnaround stalls BlackBerry announced further losses today as its comeback plan snagged on adjustments to the books. Revenue was down to $400m (GAAP) for the quarter, down from $658m. But the company made significant balance sheet adjustments including a one-time asset asset impairment charge of $501m, and an inventory write down of $41m, …
Has Chen not noticed Microsoft giving Windows 10 away? That the old business model for software sales is no longer valid? I'd love to see him explain his vision to whomever he reports to, explain why the marketing for the Priv was so perfectly fucked up... I believe a valid claim could be made that Chen set the Priv up to fail just to prove his software-only Blackberry idea to be The Only Way.
Let's recap: From the November 6th, 2015 launch, the Priv was overpriced at $720, under-marketed, and carrier locked to AT&T and T-Mobile. Six months later April 2016, Verizon and Sprint get the CDMA Priv, still at $720. The Blackberry Store carries only the GSM version, not the CDMA version, and later drops the price to $649.
Which brings us to today with the GSM Priv for $499 at Amazon - still cannot purchase a new unlocked CDMA Priv from anyone other than Verizon or Sprint for.... drum-roll please.... $720.
IDK, this is kinda fragmented - reminds me of the BB Torch when it was introduced. AT&T got the slider version and Verizon got the non-slider Torch three months later. Made me mad enough to switch from our BB Storm2's to Samsung S4s and then to the Note3. I was thrilled to see the Priv introduced, I'm feeling a little burned by Samsung for not releasing Marshmallow on the Note3*, and was interested in getting some organized security patches/upgrades in a timely manner fro a vendor I trusted. Give me Apple quality hardware with Blackberry security software and I'll buy everything they have. But nooooo....
*Require Marshmallow for some stuff I want to do.
In general people don't care about security. They want an iPhone or a fashionable brand of Android. The BlackBerry Priv is neither but they priced it the same or higher. It was always going to fail. Blackberry stayed asleep too long and by the time they woke up the world had passed them by.
That said there is still demand for a handset with a qwerty keyboard but they need to use an ounce of common sense when pricing it.
If you take a look at Chen's history, he's very software focussed, which means he's not really into phones as the main source of revenue.
Moreover, if you take a look here - I'd say that this is a clue which areas his next expansion plan will be:
http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_6118_3.html
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