The troubled smartphone maker Blackberry was once top of the pile has today agreed a sale to a private consortium.
According to Reuters the beleaguered manufacturer is to be sold to a group of companies led by Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd for $4.7 billion.
A “Letter of Intent” has been signed by Blackberry in a potential deal worth $9 per share. There is to be 6 weeks of due diligence during which time Blackberry is free to look for higher bids.
This is some $2.5bn less than Microsoft paid for Nokia.
The question now is what are they going to do with the company. Is it to be broken up and sold on or will the consortium try to turn around the fortunes of the failing company?
Time will tell what the future holds for Blackberry but clearly after last weeks dismal results something has to change and this looks like the beginning.
less than nokia, more than star wars.
The force is strong with this one.
Think it’s pretty much un-turnaroundable now. Last dude tried to turn things around with no success, bit late for a phoenix like return to glory, fallen too far…
Well, I don’t think they are quite unsalvageable, but pretty close. Their business offerings are still fairly strong, but they remain quite expensive to implement, and the BYOD thing has really taken off in the US. I think by streamlining a lot and innovating in the business space they can claw back some market share.
If BlackBerry Enterprise was made free, and was maybe bundled in with an integrated corporate cloud messaging system, they could maintain a very steady user-base, and even grow it. I think a slight change of approach and just letting go of the consumer market, they might actually get somewhere.
Here’s an idea – why not modify their latest hardware to be an open-platform which could readily accept other operating systems? Fairly unorthodox stuff, I know, but its this sort of thing which could create a niche market which could in-turn spawn a whole new market.