A few minutes ago BlackBerry issued its press release with financial results for Q4. As usual it’s a good news / bad news situation, and the conference call is in less than half an hour. I’ll come back afterwards with a more detailed review. Until then here are a few things I noticed. Revenue was weaker than analysts expected. Consensus estimates were $1.11 billion but the company...
Last night, in BlackBerry-related news, we found out that the well-regarded Senior VP of Software, Sebastien Marineau, has resigned from BlackBerry to accept a position of VP of Core OS at Apple. BlackBerry felt that its soon-to-be former executive violated their agreement so they brought the matter before the courts and prevailed. For those unaware, Sebastien Marineau came over as...
This Friday morning BlackBerry will report the final quarter of the company’s fiscal 2014 results. As usual, I’ll remind you that yes, it is really the end of their 2014 year since they have a February year end to their fiscal year. To set the stage for the announcement, let’s take a quick look back at what happened last quarter. The company reported only $1.2 billion in revenue for Q3...
Yesterday CBC posted a story confirming additional job cuts in Waterloo. In this most recent example, BlackBerry is eliminating 120 jobs from the company’s product development and wireless teams. BlackBerry claims these cuts are part of the broader 40% staff reduction announced last September. We have to keep in mind that it takes quite a while to implement major staff cuts, so it’s...
Two giants, one surprise and a still-struggling BlackBerry
When Ed Zabitsky of ACI Research launched coverage of BlackBerry last July, the stock has just collapsed from over $14 to below $10. Zabitsky saw the cross-platform BBM story as highly attractive, despite understanding that the enterprise revenue model was going through a big transition. Zabitsky has just published a brief note reiterating his strong buy recommendation and $20 target...
Today Apple made CarPlay official. Automobile makers who support the technology will essentially be implementing a way for drivers to interact with their iPhone through the car's infotainment system, which includes the car's touch screen, microphone, buttons, etc. It's important to point out that the cars are not running iOS. Apple would probably never license iOS to anyone, so we're...
BlackBerry is moving fast under the leadership of John Chen. I’ve never seen the company make as many changes as it has in the last few months. Not even close. I don’t think I’m alone in saying this has turned me into a big fan of Chen. One of these changes has been to place the BBM leadership in the hands of the enterprise team led by John Sims. Not even a week after I wrote an...
This week, during MWC in Barcelona, BlackBerry announced that we’ll soon see the return of the famous optical trackpad that so many of us loved prior to the launch of BlackBerry 10. I’m among the trackpad loving crowd, and I’m reminded of this every time I try to move the cursor around my screen to edit text on any of today’s typical touchscreen devices. Last April I took a mini-rant...
At the start of this millennium BlackBerry did something amazing. They mobilized email. At the time it was rare to see a holstered RIM 850 or RIM 950 handheld …because the people who owned them were addicts. They were always sending and reading email on their devices. Ultimately this addictive nature of the product is what inspired Kevin to start CrackBerry in the first place. That was...
The news of Facebook acquiring WhatsApp for an enormous pile of money is front and center in the mobile communication industry today, and for good reason. Having watched WhatsApp grow from nothing into a cross platform winner over the last 5 years, quickly overtaking BBM and doing a darn good job of executing on a growth plan, I'm impressed with what they've done while I've been...
Only a little more than a week ago we heard that Andrew Bocking, the former Executive VP in charge of BBM, was leaving BlackBerry. I didn’t see it coming. Initially there was some debate about whether Bocking quit of his own volition or was let go. Kevin updated the original news post with confirmation that he did choose to leave on his on terms. As for the reason, we're not yet sure....
Earlier this week Forbes published a story based on an interview with John Chen from about a month ago. The short version is this: Chen doesn’t think it’s all about volume. He gives the example of Porsche and Lamborghini in the automobile industry to illustrate that there are lots of successful niche players in various markets. BlackBerry will focus on markets that are regulated, and...
This morning VMware announced plans to acquire BlackBerry MDM competitor AirWatch. The mostly-cash transaction is valued at $1.5 billion. For those unfamiliar with VMware, it is a publicly traded company in the virtualization infrastructure market. It’s a very large company valued at over $40 billion compared to BlackBerry’s $7 billion (Note: I’m counting the convertible stock as equity...
BlackBerry’s stock price was up again yesterday, and it’s logical to assume this move was driven by the Pentagon’s announcement that it will deploy 80,000 new BlackBerry devices starting Jan 31st of this year. UPDATE: It looks like I was mistaken to use the word "new". While some deployments will certainly be new devices (people break/lose them, new ones are purchased), this doesn't...
This morning I had a chance to sit down with a hot cup (ok, several cups) of coffee and read the recently-published and very bullish report on BlackBerry by Citron Research. I have a feeling most of you haven’t ever heard of Citron before, but neither had I. That said, I’ve become a big fan of them. Who is Citron? If you read most of the stories that reference their BlackBerry report...
If you’ve been are a shareholder of BlackBerry over the past few years it’s mostly been painful. But if you’ve held the shares over the last month it’s been very rewarding. BlackBerry bottomed out below $6 in December and is now rallied about 50% to almost $9 (USD) today. The big move started when John Chen quarterbacked the latest earnings call. I posted my thoughts on that already,...
Last month BlackBerry announced a huge change in its hardware strategy by implementing a joint venture with FoxConn, the Taiwanese giant of the electronics manufacturing industry. John Chen disclosed that the two companies plan to build their first phone together for the Indonesian market, and it will be built in a new Indonesian factory. Obviously there is no reason such a phone news...
This week the world of mobile computing turned its attention to the automobile industry because of fresh headlines that Google has signed a deal with Audi to power its in-car entertainment and information systems. This isn’t a new topic, obviously. Last October I had a conversation with a hard working Bay Street analyst who told me he’d been talking to plenty of car manufacturers and...
Today we had our first taste of a BlackBerry quarterly conference call under the leadership of John Chen. We like this guy. He didn’t come armed with a script of prepared remarks to read at us like most CEOs. Instead, he just talked, unscripted, about what’s happening in the business. Chen has only been on the job for 45 days, but it’s obvious he’s not just sitting around thinking...