Posts by MarleysGhost 5 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Sep 2013
"With a global enterprise customer base exceeding 80,000, we have three times the number of customers compared to Good, AirWatch and MobileIron combined," he wrote.
Well ya, John but then Good, Airwatch and Mobiliron actually manage multiplatform customers as opposed to just aging BlackBerry e-mailers.
Does anyone here remember that scene from "Airplane" Stewardess grasping the microphone :- Ladies and Gentlemen this is your chief of cabin crew here. Some of you may have noticed a loud bang and the plane shaking. Please be aware this is nothing to be alarmed about and is just some turbulence.
Oh, yes, and is there anybody on board that knows how to fly a plane?
Ledswinger - sadly I agree. Unfortunately if you are willing to be ruthless and Cerberus are not exactly known as kitten huggers. Buy it. Sell the IP immediately. Sell QNX as a going concern. Ditto Certicom. Ditch all hardware and software development ,maybe spin it off to a Chinese manufacturer. Strip Sales, Mkt, HR, Legal, everything but network support and ops down to the barest bones. Sell the huge property portfolio. Oh yea - Sell the jet!
Then just gracefully run down the network till the service fee revenue dwindles too low. Guess that would be 3-4 years. The only glitch is the poor employees. Bad enough with Fairfax about half of them lose their jobs. Guess with Cerberus it could be much much hjgher than that?
Localzuk - Your sentiment is right but it is one of life's great myths that BlackBerry makes the vast majority of their money from business. That is why they are circling the porcelain pan now. That is why the jobs massacre.
Business customers are more profitable but only represent about 10-20% of customers. The current plan of ditch everything but business, is probably the "least worst" plan. Even if firing 10,000 employees and rightsizing happens there is no longer the guarantee that the business customers will stay with what will then be a tiny niche proprietary vendor that lacks scale to innovate like the big boys. Remember in the past there were NO competitors at all. The situation is very different now. Blackberry still has an edge in areas like security but there are now plenty of credible alternatives which are stronger in other areas.
That is why the stock price continues to fall away even though there is a theoretical $9 base. The market is saying this is just sending good money after bad.
Its a falling knife but hats off to Watsa. Looks like he structured the deal so he can't lose. Either he flushes out a real buyer or he picks the company up for $2Bn allowing for BlackBerry's cash hoard. He will have spent that time on the board wisely. Probably knows he can sell off the patents and QNX for more than that. Fire the remaining 12,000 employees. Sell the buildings. Job done.
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