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| Science & Technology |
| Qatari Fund Invests in BlackBerry |
| 2013-11-10 |
| [An Nahar] A Qatari sovereign wealth fund was among a small group of investors who recently contributed $1 billion to Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry, U.S. securities filings showed Friday. Qatar Holding LLC joined the group led by BlackBerry's largest shareholder Fairfax Financial Holdings Inc. in making the cash infusion after the company abandoned hopes of finding a buyer earlier this month. Fairfax had offered to buy the rest of BlackBerry and take it private but backed off at the last minute, opting instead for new management and cash to give it breathing room to restructure. BlackBerry helped create a culture of mobile users glued to smartphones. But it has lost its luster as many have turned to iPhones or devices using Google ...contributed $814,540 to the 2008 Obama campaign... 's Android software. In January, BlackBerry unveiled a new platform as it sought to regain lost momentum, but its most recent numbers suggest that has been a spectacular failure. In September, the company announced that it was laying off 4,500 staff -- or one third of its global workforce -- after losing $965 million in its last quarter as sales plummeted. Canso Investment Consel Ltd., Markel Corporation and Brookfield Asset Management Inc. were also named as part of the investor group in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #6 My wife has a Blackberry, and we both have Playbooks. Playbook was overpriced when it first came out, a well-priced tablet now. I use it primarily as a book reader. Her Blackberry Z10 seems very stable and easy to use. I'm envious. I have a Samsung smart phone that doesn't like me. I rub it the wrong way. |
| Posted by: Fred 2013-11-10 11:37 |
| #5 It seems like they actually offer a better product with better potential than their main competitors, but can't make the sales. May be something like the Betamax-VHS deal, where 'better' isn't the biggest factor. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2013-11-10 09:25 |
| #4 No debt, cash in the bank. Reasonable stable business-users who seem to like it. BBM to sell off. Once you cut a vast amount of staff and board fodder there's probably a decent profit to be made. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2013-11-10 06:48 |
| #3 For the patents Blackberry holds... |
| Posted by: Steve White 2013-11-10 02:02 |
| #2 So why would the Qatari company want to infuse Blackberry with 1 bil into a company that was dead but still walking around? |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2013-11-10 00:52 |
| #1 Too much Red Ink...Blackberry is dead... |
| Posted by: Slarong Thusolet9045 2013-11-10 00:38 |