BlackBerry just cannot catch a break. Its long-running rearguard battle against Samsung and Apple seems to have played itself out, with the Canadian company reportedly looking for a company willing to buy it out. Given that BlackBerry has been steadily losing smartphone market share in terms of both hardware and software enterprise services, most analysts agree that only a buyout can save it. Things looked a little better for BlackBerry when it began talks with its largest investor, Fairfax Financial, for a possible buyout. However, in keeping with BlackBerry?s string of bad luck, the talks fell through. Instead of buying the company, Fairfax Financial agreed to invest an additional $1 billion in the company. The cash will certainly be welcome, but the new deal has none of the kind of restructuring that will be required to keep the company afloat?restructuring that would almost certainly have happened if the company had changed owners. To make matter worse, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins announced his resignation; John S Chen will take over as interim CEO.
The need for a drastic change is not lost on Chen. He is reportedly looking to realign BlackBerry towards software saying he wants BlackBerry employees to start thinking differently about the company: ?We?re really not in phones but we?re in phones for software, for services?. In keeping with this, he is looking for a CEO with a strong software and services background. Further, Chen is also looking for somebody who can sufficiently monetise BlackBerry?s software, like its immensely popular messenger app (which already accumulated more than 20 million users since it became available on iOS and Android last month). This makes sense, since BlackBerry?s strength has always been its software. But it still looks like BlackBerry is only delaying the inevitable.
