“BlackBerry Ltd. said Monday that its board of directors has formed a special committee to explore strategic alternatives that could include a sale of the company,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
“‘Given the importance and strength of our technology, and the evolving industry and competitive landscape, we believe that now is the right time to explore strategic alternatives,’ said Timothy Dattels, chairman of BlackBerry’s special committee, in a statement,” WSJ reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Translation: “Given our near total inability to sell our products due to the paradigm shift ushered in by Steve Jobs with iPhone and the resultant deer-in-the-headlights ass-kicking we have received at the hands of Apple combined with the inevitable worldwide flood of cheap iPhone knockoffs, we give up.
WSJ reports, “Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry has gone from being a leader in the global smartphone market to an also-ran; its market share has fallen from close to 50% in 2009 to less than 3%, according to IDC figures released last week. Its phones are no longer popular in the key U.S. market, and its subscriber base is falling even in developing countries…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “RIM. Dead Company Walking.” – MacDailyNews, August 5, 2010
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jack F.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Beleaguered BlackBerry shares drop 7% as Z10′s U.S. launch gets subdued reception – March 22, 2013
Gartner: Beleaguered BlackBerry in an ‘extremely difficult’ spot – March 19, 2013
Why the Z10 won’t save beleaguered Blackberry – March 11, 2013
I like that MDN. I like it a lot.
I’d been saying for a couple of years that BB would not live to see 2014. I was thinking that I was running out of time for that prediction to come true, but perhaps not…
NOW is the right time to search for strategic sale (i.e. who’s stupid enough out there to buy the whole company in 2013?) of the company? How about 3 years ago when maybe somebody thought the company was worth something. It’s like I have a few expensive tech things in my closet I didn’t sell when I should have worth bupkis now.
Stories like this only hasten their downward spiral. Corporations are the biggest buyers of Blackberrys, and no IT manager wants to be caught with his pants down the day Blackberry shutters their servers and your email goes poof.
Ironic, isn’t it, that Blackberry’s main selling feature will ultimately seal their fate.
Co-CEOs, hockey team, incessant desire ffor physical buttons, BBM, plastic
Its tough enough staying on top of the changing technology, but your worst nightmare must be to discover that Apple has just launched a new product in your market… If RIM, Motorolla, Nokia, Microsoft et al underestimated the iPhone’s impact, no-one will ever make that mistake again.
Now all that Apple needs to do now is put the Korean copier back in its box…
“… no-one will ever make that mistake again.”
You misunderestimate the stupidity of the average person.
Analysts are constantly telling the world that Apple’s hits are the exception, that any day now the 90s are going to repeat themselves and Apple will be eclipsed by (fill in the blank) who will take its rightful place as number 1.
I don’t see Blackberry in the same dim light as Mucrosoft, Samdung et al. They may have stopped all meaningful innovation, but at least they didn’t fire up the photocopiers…
That said, you can’t sit on your fat ass with the same products and expect year on year growth. It’s their own stupid fault for not moving with the times.
Yeah, Blackberry got smacked hard by the Innovator’s Dilemma. They got too comfortable selling access to their popular email service when they should have been looking for the next big thing that could replace it. Blackberry had a brief window after the iPhone’s introduction when they could have released an app-running smartphone and leveraged their dominance in the enterprise to stay on top, but they missed it.
Now, I wonder if there’s anything left of value at Blackberry at all. Even their email service has fallen out of favor.
——RM
Any good business needs to reinvest. They really never did. Once again, a case of poor management. Very prevalent today. All of these young college degree geniuses, who never had to really think about anything in their lives, are handed the reins of a company, and piss everything away. That includes older employees with years of experience. Gotta look good at those dopey conventions, ya know.
RIM deserves what they got. Unfortunately, the poor schlub working for a decent salary over there will probably be out of a job.
And even though they only had 3% market share, you need competition to make yourself better.
Yeah the saddest thing are the employees who will lose their job like when Redmond, WA inevitably becomes a ghost town with a lot of empty ex-Microsoft campus buildings. Those early heady days have just about run their course as the Peter Principle and other corporate malaise do their work. Especially if the culture hasn’t been fortified with the right corporate culture.
Amateur hour is almost over.
I see iRoadKill. Lots of road kill. Many have fallen and more this year. Will Dell make it past the next vote? RIMM BB is on it’s way out. And what of the old school game stations? They are on their way out too. And next, the home entertainment hub, the Mac Pro with streams of 4K HDTV iTunes media from 5 or more billion dollar server farms all around the world.
And the talking heads still pushing those iCarcasses every chance they can. I heard one talk about how they still like to type on those Blackberry keys today. Soon each of those iCarcasses really start to get ripe with a strong smell of decay and you start gagging standing next to them.
I wonder if BlackBerry will sell their server farms too?
They should ask Dell for advice.
No sense hurrying along the self-destruct mode any faster by getting Dell’s advice.
I guess you could say that this is their uh, Waterloo.
Canada?
And in other news, RIM is set to explore their own nether regions by employing a surgical procedure known as cranio-rectal inversion.
Oh wait, they’ve been doing that since 2007.
Carry on…
=:~)
I feel sad, for the employees, and for the small city of Waterloo, Ont., whose citizens and businesses will be impacted considerably. At least Blackberry had their own technology and did not copy and steal like Google, Android, Samsung.
I really hope BlackBerry does not fail. We need BlaxkBerey and WP to war Goosung and Android.