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Blackberry Businesses Canada

Blackberry Moves Non-Handset Divisions Into New Business Unit 89

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the at-least-qnx-gets-to-live dept.
First time accepted submitter BarbaraHudson (3785311) writes The CBC is reporting that Blackberry has made preparations to abandon the phone market by spinning pieces of the business off into Blackberry Technology Solutions. From the article: "The unit ... includes QNX, the company that BlackBerry acquired and used to develop the operating system that became the platform for its new smartphones, and Certicom, a former independent Toronto-area company with advanced security software. BTS will also include BlackBerry's Project Ion, which is an application platform focused on machine-to-machine Internet technology, Paratek antenna tuning technology and about 44,000 patents." When you have less market share than Windows Phone, it's time to throw in the towel ... or as they say in the new "lets not admit we screwed up" vernacular, "pivot to take advantage of new opportunities."
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Blackberry Moves Non-Handset Divisions Into New Business Unit More

Blackberry Moves Non-Handset Divisions Into New Business Unit

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  • Looks like some editorializing by the submitter (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Monday August 18, 2014 @08:35PM (#47699835)

    I read TFA, and saw nothing about Blackberry supposedly trying to spin a screw-up as anything else. And I heard one of CBC's tech people discuss this move on CBC Radio 1 today. Again, there was nothing about Blackberry throwing in the towel, even on its handsets. In fact, the new one was reported to be garnering a fair bit of positive feedback. I have no idea whether that's true or not, but that is what was reported on CBC.

    I'm not a Blackberry fanboi by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, my current and former phones are Samsung, but the summary offered above is dishonest...plain and simple.

    • BlackBerry Ltd. has created a new business unit that will combine some of its most innovative technology and patent portfolio as the company focuses away from handheld devices[....]

      Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the new unit reinforces the fact that Blackberry's days primarily as a handset vendor are behind it as it moves "very aggressively" toward a different business. "This is probably the most tangible evidence yet of the company's transition into something very different than it was eve

      • Re:Looks like some editorializing by the submitter (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Monday August 18, 2014 @09:05PM (#47700023)

        The summary is inaccurate from the first sentence on. There's a difference between "shifting focus" and "abandoning the market", even in the euphemistic language of business PR types. And the transition Levy was talking about was to a focus on business applications and away from general public, except in certain markets.

        • The only "inaccuracies" in the past several years have been from BlackBerry. They've been trying - and failing - to push their phone platform. The first indication that they were making the shift was when they started offering BBM for non-BlackBerry phones. Now, focusing on their Intellectual Property - we all still remember when SCO started making the same noises.

          After decimating their workforce, they're now hiring - but for non-hardware related services. For a company that renamed itself from RIM (R

          • you should read the article you posted again (and again) until you understand it fully. you appear to be a shill against blackberry
            • I'm far from a "shill against blackberry." As a Canadian, I wanted them to continue their success. However, the writing was on the wall the day they caved in to Saudi Arabia [huffingtonpost.com] and allowed government access to (and decryption of) user's secure messages.

              You can't screw over your customers and not expect people to start looking at alternatives.

              I considered a blackberry earlier this year, but it was so off the mainstream that I said to heck with it. If Blackberry had gone to android instead of qnx, I would

          • Please stay with the subject. Due to some unusual circumstances, I personally heard and read everything CBC reported on Blackberry yesterday. Your summary of what THEY said was not just inaccurate, it was deceitfully inaccurate.

            You can thrash around all you want. The fact remains: you attempted to mislead members of this community. I have no idea why, and I couldn't care less. You are dishonest. Any further submissions by you should receive close scrutiny by Slashdot's editors.

            • The CBC story is just a part of the whole story. But if you read the story on the CBC web site (which I linked to) , it includes the following:

              Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the new unit reinforces the fact that Blackberry's days primarily as a handset vendor are behind it as it moves "very aggressively" toward a different business.

              "This is probably the most tangible evidence yet of the company's transition into something very different than it was even a year or two ago," Levy said.

              "It suggests they are no longer as dependent on handset-based revenue as they once were and as a result they have both the financial foundation as well as the corporate organizational confidence to more concretely move away from those lines of businesses into areas that are largely based on its intellectual property."

              He said the move was positive for Blackberry, noting that it has struggled with its product launches and faced stiff competition from other smartphone makers while it has received little credit for its range of capabilities, especially when it came to software.

              We've seen this story before - a company decides to concentrate on software and services, and sells off their hardware lines. IBM and Lenovo with PCs, and now with servers, should ring a bell.

              Blackberry moving all their IP into a separate business unit is the logical way to get ready to sell off their phone division for the maximum return. People have known for

              • You're just drawing conclusions and without precedent. The article is slanted, your summary is just misleading. We all know they made mistakes, media has that one down. Now their downsizing (not news). and this article shows they're diversifying (not surprising). Why bother post this at all? If they sell off their handset line, that would be news. This is just good business.

                • You're just drawing conclusions and without precedent.

                  That sentence doesn't parse. If you meant "without justification", there's plenty of justification - and actually no other conclusion is possible given the facts. Their handset operation's bleeding them dry, and both they and investors know it. The $965 million loss on the writedown of the Z10 inventory shows just how "out of touch" Blackberry is with what the market wants in a smartphone. The creation of a new business unit that houses all the IP but does not have a thing to do with manufacturing smartp

              • Quit trying to change the subject. You attempted to use the CBC, which has a decent reputation for reporting tech intelligently and without bias, to lend spurious legitimacy to your own deceitful, misleading summary.

                And quit repeating Levi's comment as though your original summary didn't misrepresent what he said.

                I don't know what your issue is with Blackberry, and I couldn't care less. What I DO care about is that you're a liar who attempted to deceive Slashdot readers. I hope the people running th

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by unimacs ( 597299 )
          I think the market has pretty much abandoned them. They started the year with a market share of a few percentage points in the US, now it's less than .5 percent.

          It's hard to survive as a platform if the market isn't big enough to justify 3rd party development. Yes I know it can run Android apps, - sort of. The reality simply may be that they can not get enough traction and sell enough units to justify the R&D it takes to turn out decent hardware and software. Lots of good PC operating systems died w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sixoh1 ( 996418 )

      Ehh, a bit adhomenim for my tastes. TFA makes a bit point about how important "IP" is to the new outfit. In the CEO's own words "...people don't give us credit..." which is code for - we're not making enough money from selling hardware, and lookie here at all these wonderful patents we can use to generate licenses fees or sell as an asset.

  • The liquidator in 18 months when it comes time sell the remaining furniture and copy machines.

    • Re:Moving valuable assets into one division will h (Score:5, Insightful)

      by narcc ( 412956 ) on Monday August 18, 2014 @09:47PM (#47700235) Journal

      Blackberry: Gone in a year since 2010

      Their demise, I presume, will coincide with the year of the Linux desktop and strong AI.

      • I suppose it depends on how one defines "gone". If living in hospice is considered living then I guess they're surviving.
  • Maybe now is time for the executives to return the bonuses and share them with the employees....it looks like they didn't do a great job after all.....
  • Please, please, please. Pretty please with a cherry on top?

    All the android makers have abandoned the high end keyboard phone. It's a niche that needs filling. It's not going to reinvigorate the handset side of the company, but would help pay some bills with minimal investment.

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