Earlier this morning BlackBerry reported Q4 results for fiscal 2015. Revenue dropped from $793 million in Q3 to only $660 million in Q4, but that's mostly hardware related. On most other metrics things are looking up for the company, which explains the stock market's mildly positive reaction to the results. The stock is up about 20 cents as I write this, to US $9.52 per share....
Earlier this morning BlackBerry posted its results for Q3 of fiscal 2015. Every quarter it seems people think this is a typo, so as a gentle reminder I'll point out that the company has a February fiscal year end. To jump right to the short term situation, the market is not particularly keen on the numbers. The stock is down about 6% as I type these words. I suspect the big reason for...
Yesterday could turn out to be one of the most pivotal days in the transformation of BlackBerry. I don't say this lightly either. I've been very concerned, yet hopeful about the future of the business since before the launch of BlackBerry 10. Despite the huge earnings and stock price volatility I still remain both concerned and hopeful. And I'm still a shareholder. I've never sold any...
Here we are again. Another quarter has gone by and BlackBerry has reported another set of financial results. I look forward to these reports. I enjoy breaking down what can often seem like complex stuff into something that novice investors can understand. I enjoy being able to focus on what matters. Before I go into the numbers, let's have a quick glance at the markets. As I write...
With documentation of $30 per year BBM Protected price plans starting to emerge, it's worth discussing what effect this might have on the company's earnings and stock price. As it stands right now, BBM Protected requires a BlackBerry device. That will change in the fall when it becomes available for Android and iOS through Secure Work Space but for now, let's just stick with the...
Yesterday BlackBerry announced that they've hired a Chief Operating Officer. The company has not had a COO since John Chen took over and cleaned house. Remember when Thorsten Heins brought in his own management team including COO Kristian Tear who had tremendous experience from Sony Ericsson and Ericsson? Or how about the co-COO structure that worked very well for BlackBerry during its...
Yesterday IBM and Apple announced the start of a significant courtship that stands to forever change the landscape of enterprise mobility. In short, Apple and IBM launched an exclusive deal by which IBM will sell iPhones and iPads to its enterprise customer base, create iOS apps and services, and launch other cloud solutions including mobile device management (MDM). That last bit …...
In the weeks since BlackBerry's latest earnings announcement the stock has climbed significantly higher. It was trading in the $8 range (all figures in USD) prior to the quarterly news, and has now advanced to $11.43 as I write this. This week the stock reached a high of $11.63, which is very close to the company's 52-week high of $12.18. Momentum traders like to see stocks making...
On June 26th BlackBerry announced, via a blog post, something they are calling a "fact check portal." Technically it's not a portal but a category under which they can file blog posts. We can call it whatever we like. Portal, category or even a dedicated blog … these are just labels. What matters to me is the content and how well they market it. The very first blog post under this...
John Chen seems to be exactly the dose of medicine that BlackBerry needed to get things moving in the right direction again. He's only been CEO for about 7 months but his mark is everywhere, and I mean that in a good way. If you don't have time to read all the details let me just say this: BlackBerry has gone from being a company that I thought might not have enough cash to stay alive...
First thing tomorrow morning BlackBerry will report Q1 results. It should be a great conference call since the company has officially launched the Jakarta phone and they've announced support for Amazon's app store in OS 10.3, which I think could go a long way to resolving many of the most common consumer complaints. But more on that in a separate piece. As a reminder, last quarter...
Several months ago I embarked on an experiment. As a guy who'd used BlackBerry since 2000 I had deep experience with the platform along with good experience on iOS. But I had practically no experience on Android. So I put my Z10 on my bedside table and left it there while I moved my SIM into a Samsung Galaxy S4. At the time it was among the best Android handsets available. I realize I'...
Several years ago BlackBerry started a secret project to bring BES-like features to families. This was way back when the iPhone didn't even have copy and paste yet, the iPad didn't exist and Android had next to no market share. BlackBerry was still king of the smartphone world so the idea of going cross-platform wasn't terribly important yet. BlackBerry Unite offered families a way to...
On November 4th, BlackBerry's board of directors made a shocking announcement. The company was officially ending its strategic review and eliminating the plan to go private. Instead they raised $1 billion in convertible debt, fired Thorsten Heins as CEO and brought in a guy named John Chen who was new to CrackBerry readers, but very experienced at technology turnarounds. The financing...
Lately I've been feeling like there isn't much exciting going on in the world of BlackBerry. We're basically waiting until November to see if BES traction is as good as the company says it will be, and hoping to see BlackBerry get back to profitability. That's why last week's announcement of Project Ion was somewhat exciting to me. Don't get me wrong - I think the press release said...
On BlackBerry's last quarterly conference call, CEO John Chen said that customers are responding well to the product plans that the company has shared with its enterprise customers. Chen described a customer base that is willing to wait to see what arrives from BlackBerry in November of this year. Today BlackBerry was featured as the winning vendor in a new report from Strategy...
UPDATED: Reuters reached out to explain things. They claim the original quote from their story is accurate and was part of a bigger off-camera interview. It was still out of context, but it wouldn't be fair to suggest they misquoted, so I've updated the text. Yesterday turned out to be a pretty big mess as far as BlackBerry news goes. Last night Reuters posted a brief story quoted John...
While the new BlackBerry CEO hasn’t been at the company very long, he’s made a lot of changes and most of us agree that he’s been very effective so far. Lately, on the legal front, he’s shown that BlackBerry won’t take any crap from anyone. The company successfully stopped Typo from selling their iPhone case after convincing a judge that BlackBerry would likely win a lawsuit. The...
Last Friday we had a chance to look at the Q4 financials for BlackBerry, and the CrackBerry team held a podcast to talk about it. Were we all doom and gloom? I don’t think it was quite that negative, but we are keeping it balanced and considering the good and bad areas of the business when we talk. No sugar coating. Over the weekend I did some more thinking about BlackBerry, while...
This morning BlackBerry published Q4 results for fiscal 2014 and held the usual analyst conference call. I’ll go through the results here, and I’d like to invite you to post your comments below. First of all, John Chen did a great job of communicating on the call. I really like this guy as the CEO. When he speaks it’s obvious that he understands the issues that are bothering...