Blackberry shakes up senior management

Blackberry once dominated the smartphone market but has struggled recently

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Struggling smartphone maker Blackberry has shaken up its top management as part of its on-going reorganization.

The firm's chief financial officer, Brian Bidulka, will be replaced by James Yersh who has previously served as controller and head of compliance.

The chief financial officer and chief operating officer will leave the firm with no replacements announced.

This comes just weeks after the firm appointed a new interim chief executive as it shelved a plan to sell itself.

Blackberry named John Chen as the interim chief executive officer (CEO) as it announced it had abandoned a planned sale to its biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings.

The management changes are the first major move made by Mr Chen.

'Working more closely'

Blackberry once dominated the smartphone market, but has seen its fortunes dwindle in recent years,

It has been hurt by the success and popularity of smartphones launched by rivals such as Apple and Samsung. Its attempts to boost its market share have not yielded the desired results.

In September, it reported a net loss of $965m (£597m) for the second quarter, blaming poor sales of its new smartphone, the Z10.

The firm has also announced a plan to cut 4,500 jobs, or 40% of its workforce, to reverse the giant losses.

Mr Chen said the management changes were aimed at refining the company's strategy "to ensure we deliver the best devices, mobile security and device management".

"I look forward to working more directly with the talented teams of engineers, and the sales and marketing teams around the world to facilitate the BlackBerry turn-around and to drive innovation," he added.

BBM gets fake reviews on Google Play, BlackBerry denies involvement

BlackBerry has been accused of “astroturfing”, or artificially jacking up its reputation through fake reviews. But BlackBerry is quick to deny involvement.

One does not even have to be the Grammar Nazi to consider these Google Play reviews headache-inducing. “Thank you so much Blackberry team,” the review goes. “I was waiting this app. It is really great user friendly and smooth.”

“I was waiting this app” might just go down in history as the next best-remembered linguistic gaffe after the “All your base are belong to us” in-game translation of the 1980s.

Missing commas and absent prepositions aside, the biggest attention draw from this particular review is the sheer number of similar entries. A “whole bunch” of these reviews seems to have been astroturfed, says Lee Hutchinson on Ars Technica, referring to the practice of artificially masking a public relations campaign  as a legitimate community-driven effort. However, the bad writing, repetitiveness and high ratings are a giveaway that something is amiss. 200,000 5-star reviews with the same wording is certainly not a normal thing.

A deeper look into the review threads comes up with what seems to be a gem: “Please post the following comment on the new BlackBerry Messenger Android APP. ‘Thank you so much black berry team…’,” says the text, followed by the same review text above. However, there is, of course, doubt as to the origin of this message.

BlackBerry is not exactly in the best position in the smartphone market today, having fast been overtaken by Android and iOS as mobile platforms. However, the company’s spinning-off of its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service to work on iOS and Android had been a much-anticipated and welcomed move. Reception has been mixed, so far, with many lauding the effort as potentially BlackBerry’s saving grace, but some criticizing it for being too little, too late. But are fake reviews going to improve the app’s standing?

BlackBerry has denied any involvement in the matter, saying it has “no knowledge of how the reviews were created or populated,” and that the company “does not approve of or condone such activities.”

Emil Protalinski commented, however, on The Next Web that this could have been a BlackBerry-sanctioned campaign gone wrong, and businesses have been known to artificially ramp up their credentials, or criticize their competitors’ products. Take for instance Samsung, which is today’s top Android device manufacturer. The company was fined for unfair business practices for slandering HTC.

Either way, users are encouraged to focus on using and reviewing BBM for what it is — a supposedly secure and private instant messaging service for various platforms that could potentially be the next best thing for BlackBerry after its wireless email pagers and QWERTY keypads.

Blackberry Posts $965m Loss In Its Second Quarter

BlackBerry said on Friday that it lost $965
million in the past quarter, confirming
preliminary figures showing a rapidly
eroding picture for the Canadian
smartphone maker. The company, which had given a preliminary
estimate for its second fiscal quarter
results, acknowledged the figures were
weak, but said it hopes for a turnaround
with a planned $4.7 billion buyout, which
would take the firm private. “We are very disappointed with our
operational and financial results this quarter
and have announced a series of major
changes to address the competitive
hardware environment and our cost
structure,” said Thorsten Heins, president and chief executive. He added that the company is putting in
place “the necessary changes to create the
best business model” for its ailing product. “We understand how some of the activities
we are going through create uncertainty,
but we remain a financially strong company
with $2.6 billion in cash and no debt,” Heins
said. “We are focused on our targeted markets,
and are committed to completing our
transition quickly in order to establish a
more focused and efficient company.” Revenue for quarter ending August 31 was
$1.6 billion, down 49 per cent from $3.1
billion in the previous quarter and down 45
per cent from $2.9 billion in the same
quarter of fiscal 2013. The company said it shipped some 5.9
million smartphones in the quarter, which is
less than what Apple sold in the past
weekend in the global launch of its new
iPhones. BlackBerry has said it will cut its workforce
by some 40 per cent as it seeks to
restructure the company. Colin Gillis at the research firm BCG said
the results were “startling weak “ and may
signal the end for BlackBerry. “While we applaud the decision to focus on
retooling the company into a niche
enterprise focused business, it seems
years too late,” he said in a note to clients. “Just as the consumer business has
crumbled, the enterprise business is also in
decay in our opinion. Given the negative
news flow from the company, enterprise
customers are likely to shy away from
committing to a struggling platform.” BlackBerry was just a few years ago
considered the leader in smartphones, but
has rapidly lost ground to Apple and other
manufacturers, mainly using the Google
Android operating system. BlackBerry announced this week that it
signed a letter of intent with a group led by
Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, which has
offered to acquire the company. Fairfax, a Canadian firm headed by
billionaire Prem Watsa, is already
BlackBerry’s largest shareholder with
approximately 10 per cent of its shares. Watsa resigned from BlackBerry’s board in
August when it announced a search for a
suitor. Under the proposed BlackBerry-Fairfax deal
the consortium would offer $9 for each
outstanding share, and Fairfax would
contribute its own shares in the transaction. A firm deal, once due diligence is
completed, is expected by November 4. It
also hinges on the consortium obtaining
financing. BlackBerry still has some 70 million
subscribers worldwide, but most of these
are using older handsets, with the newer
devices on the BlackBerry 10 platform
failing to gain traction. According to research firm IDC,
BlackBerry’s global market share was just
2.9 per cent in the second quarter, the
lowest since the firm began tracking. Because BlackBerry has some $2.6 billion
cash on hand, the Fairfax offer is worth
around $2 billion for the value of the
enterprise, analysts point out. While BlackBerry’s newest smartphones
have not sold well, analysts say its software
and services are strong, especially for
device management for companies with a
need for strong security. [AFP]