Hasta La Gadget!

BlackBerry is replacing its CEO and some of its board of directors, according to official PR this morning. The push to replace CEO Thorsten Heins comes as BlackBerry’s purchase deal with investor Fairfax Financial Holdings falls through, according to the release. Fairfax had until today to enter into a definitive agreement with BlackBerry, but reportedly had trouble finding the funds.

BlackBerry has now raised around $1 billion by selling convertible notes to investors, and CEO Heins will leave as part of the agreement, alongside changes to the board. Heins took over the reins at BlackBerry back in January 2012, and so leaves his tenure after a little under two years in charge. During that time, BlackBerry has launched BlackBerry 10, and also a number of new handsets including the Q10, Z10 and Z30, but that has done little to turn around the company’s ailing fortunes.

The company has been shopping itself around to potential buyers, including Intel, according to multiple reports, and assurances from Heins that it was considering all options, but this latest change in strategy suggests it couldn’t find a deal that worked for both shareholders and potential acquirers.

The new deal sees Fairfax and other institutional investors putting $1 billion U.S. in convertible debentures. Fairfax itself will acquire a $250,000 stake in those bonds, and the whole deal should come off within the next two weeks. Thosten Heins will step down when the deal closes, to be replaced by John S. Chen (previously chairman and CEO of Sybase) as interim CEO (and Executive Chairman of the Board), while the company undertakes a search for a new CEO. Fairfax CEO Prem Watsa will be named Lead Director of the Board, and board member David Kerr will depart along with Heins.

Chen arrives from Sybase, an SAP company that offers database management, analytics and data warehousing, as well as mobile app development platforms for enterprise users. He comes on as an interim CEO only according to the release, but that could provide some indication of where the company is heading with this shift in management and strategy.

BlackBerry’s official PR line around the deal seems to indicate that it’s looking at this as a way to strengthen its business to continue serving customers as before, and the company says this “marks the conclusion” of the strategic review officially launched in August 2013 by its Board of Directors. Fairfax’s Prem Watsa, then a board member, resigned at the time to avoid “potential conflicts” that could’ve arisen during the process of said review, and considering the role Fairfax has played to this point, that seems to have been a wise move.

An enterprise focus under Chen could be just what BlackBerry needs, but investors don’t seem to be that impressed with the way this has shaken out, as share price is down nearly 20 percent in pre-market trading. Heins obviously wasn’t the turnaround magician the Canadian company needed, but this shift doesn’t do much to detract from the uncertainty surrounding BlackBerry’s future.

[Illustration: Bryce Durbin]

Remember the rumor that BlackBerry was planning to take itself private? Just a few days later and the company has confirmed that some very fundamental discussions are indeed taking place. In a press release, the Canadian smartphone maker revealed that a committee has been formed to look for “strategic alternatives” to push BlackBerry 10, which could involve a merger, selling the company or taking BlackBerry private. Naturally, there’s no indication that anything will actually change at the beleaguered company, but at least we know Thorsten Heins is actively pursuing new options.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Blackberry

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Via: The Globe and Mail

Holding out for a post-RIM version of the PlayBook? That waiting likely won’t end any time soon. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins used an interview yesterday to discuss the mobile environment five years out. Seems he’s feeling particularly bullish about his own company’s prospects. “In five years, I see BlackBerry to be the absolute leader in mobile computing — that’s what we’re aiming for,” he told the interviewer. “I want to gain as much market share as I can, but not by being a copycat.”

Not being a copycat may likely involve staying away from the crowded tablet market. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” according to the CEO. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.” This certainly isn’t the first time the exec has expressed caution about the space in the wake of the PlayBook’s lukewarm reception. Heins has mentioned in the past that the company won’t jump back into tablets unless it sees the potential for profits.

Update: BlackBerry has since issued an official response to the interview,

The comments that Thorsten made yesterday are in line with previous comments he has made about the future of mobile computing overall, and the possibilities that come with a platform like BlackBerry 10. We continue to evaluate our tablet strategy, but we are not making any shifts in that strategy in the short term. When we do have information about our PlayBook strategy, we will share it.

Filed under: Tablets

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Source: Bloomberg

Squint and you’ll find a few neat parallels between BlackBerry and Nokia. Both are fallen giants which are staking their livelihoods on a nascent OS, while the former is a Canadian run by a European, and vice-versa. The one point where the pair’s philosophies differ, however, is on the low-end market. While Nokia strove to embrace low-end phones like the Asha and the 105. Thorsten Heins has said he has no interest in producing budget phones for the developing world. At a question and answer session at the company’s Waterloo HQ, the CEO was quoted as saying “You will not see us getting into the 50-, 60-buck phone segment. This is not BlackBerry.” The move might alienate those who thought the Z10’s elevated price in places like India was a bit excessive — but at least Stephen Elop’s got something for every wallet size.

Filed under: Mobile, Blackberry

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Source: Bloomberg

BlackBerry 10 is probably going to come out one day in the future, in the same way that an asteroid the size of Canada will probably hit and destroy Earth one day in the future. But regardless, some way to drum up interest is to… leak pictures of your own CEO using a pre-production BlackBerry 10 smartphone at a basketball game? I guess. More »