Comment Curious definition of "Profit" (Score 1) 67
The slashdot headline says "..Back in Profit." Unfortunately not so.
The original article is informative. Under Chen's leadership Blackberry has
increased their profitability so they are no longer losing so much money.
They are, however, NOT PROFITABLE. Their loss prior to some accounting
tricks (that will make the number worse) is $0.11/shr. That means an
investor holding 1000 shares just lost $110 (if he/she sold them).
While profitability as a measure of how well a company performs is good,
and acknowledging that LOSING MILLIONS is a lot better than LOSING
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS (see e.g. Radio Shack)... Blackberry has a
long long way to go.
The article ends with the two avenues Blackberry is pursuing: hardware and
software (how inventive, right?)
- Hardware: they're going to try and create Internet enabled gadgets. As
Blackberry's core hardware competence has always been its bundled
business services this is a big departure. They fight uphill against
Samsung watches, Apple gizmos, Google's Nest, etc.
- Sofware: They bought the right to allow their product to access the
Amazon Play Store (android apps from Amazon only). The win here
is they prove their product REALLY CAN run android apps. The lose
is that instead of opening it up to the Google Play store (most
android apps) they've allowed a limited (by Amazon) subset of apps,
and most designed to siphon extra $$$ and hand them off to Amazon.
This is something we can expect to see Amazon touting as a win in
it's 10Q.
I wish them well. I was surprised by the headline. BlackBerry is
doing well to reduce loss, and less loss is higher profitability, but
they're still chewing threw their cash and unless they stem and
correct that they will be gone.
E