EditorBlackBerry CEO John Chen says HIGH TECH The search for BlackBerry’s heir Lenovo pursued BlackBerry bid, but Ottawa rejected idea BlackBerry CEO John Chen holds up the Blackberry Passport device. BlackBerry CEO John Chen says he will try to leverage the “emotional” attachment of Canadians to the company to lure back customers. BlackBerry launched its new Passport device Wednesday SMARTPHONES.
BlackBerry launch of BB10 phone series was so disastrous that BlackBerry run out of cash & was utterly fighting for its life in last 2013. But then too federal government has not accepted the takeover. And the senior federal officials signaled via back channels that Ottawa was against the foreign purchase of a company which has all its secure networks & phone systems have a major share of government & corporate messages.
But after a year now BlackBerry stands as a recovering company with its new CEO John Chen, & also with a brand new line of phones & major shareholders like Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., which has 9 % stake in the company.
Prem Watsa, Fairfax founder & a lead BlackBerry Director was the supporter paying an average cost of about $17 a share for his BlackBerry stake. And Mr. Watsa would be willing to sell the share at $11.63 on the Toronto Stock Exchange as on Monday.
And Lenovo’s other biggest hurdles are Washington & Ottawa, who are the mostly some of the BlackBerry’s biggest customers. Because BlackBerry’s service of message encryption & secure network are hold by security department & agencies on both sides of the border. And even the BlackBerry devices nearly 80 % of smart phones have been issued to U.S. defence staff. And thus BlackBerry faced opposition from U.S. Politicians for all the past takeovers. And in light of past events of opposition. Even in the present bid of Lenovo will also be on the same lines & would face severe scrutiny & opposition.
And BlackBerry was not all willing to make clear the government clients about its shelved plan of 2011 of takeovers with Chinese backers which include China Investment Corp. If that plan was implemented at all then BlackBerry would have supported the Chinese handset makers in the global competition from Nokia by providing its licensed operating system. But due to concerns of government customers & its consequent weakened BlackBerry global sales that plan was shelved.
Now in the present scenario Lenovo has been the competitor in the Smart phone market over BlackBerry & Nokia. According to the Gartner Group research firm Lenovo has nearly 5 % of global smart phone sales making twice than BlackBerry’s 2.7 % share.
Mohith Agadi
