Comments on: BlackBerry – Circling vultures

By: tatilsever

tatilsever — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 00:25:46 +0000

> “Given BB10′s lack of traction the word talent needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.”
Oh, come on that is a low blow. Lack of traction doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of quality. Timing plays a role, so does marketing and executive level actions.

> “Hence the value of the portfolio is the present value of the royalty stream”
Yes, that is what I tried to say in my comment. It has no strategic value for hardware makers. It is equivalent to buying a corporate bond portfolio of some telecomm related companies, OK, maybe more like a convertible bond portfolio.

By: windsorr

windsorr — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 07:50:56 +0000

Given BB10’s lack of traction the word talent needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Perhaps a private BB is better off if they do stay in Canada and do something else.

There aren’t any real outstanding lawsuits because the BB portfolio is widely licenced. Hence the value of the portfolio is the present value of the royalty stream that is being and will be generated in years to come. I don’t have a figure for that but it will be pretty valuable..BBery coughed up more than $1bn to acquire these patents some time ago in a series of different transaction.

By: tatilsever

tatilsever — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 07:34:09 +0000

> “These companies could move all of the development to China…”
Most of the talent at BB would be staying in Canada, so such an acquisition would be for patents, brand name and customer inertia in moving from BBM.

I don’t know of major patents lawsuits between BB and other major vendors, so I assume BB has already made licensing agreements with Apple, Samsung and Nokia, reducing the usefulness of these patents to the expected cash flow. In any case, the value Google got out of Motorola’s patents and the price paid for Kodak’s patents indicate that the great gold rush for mobile patents is over. Now that BBM can be made available on other platforms, it does not sound that valuable for a hardware maker. That about leaves brand name as the only valuable asset to a hardware maker, but by the time the deal closes, I doubt there will be much shine left on Blackberry brand. I would be very surprised if any handset maker acquires BB unless they are planning to keep developing BB10, as an alternative to Android for differentiation or insurance against Google locking it down. $3 billion price point sounds too high for that.