BB - BlackBerry

[Guest wellmont]

umm crackberry is where all the leaks come from. it's where the initial leak of bb10 came from. it's where the first leak of z10 came from. the reason it's such a good source is because that's where all the ultra hard core fan bois hang out and they have every incentive to try and uncover what's going on with rimm. It's also operated by a very connected and well informed rimm fan boi who has ties inside the company.

 

If you had read crackberry and other sources like I did, you would have known that the z10 would have a dual core processor, and not a quad core as you Speculated. you can diminish the source all you want. But the truth is they are working on a larger screen phone. and they better be. Apple is now rumored to have a larger screen phone by mid year. Samsung is increasing the size of the screen on their two best selling smartphones which will be released later this year. A large screen phone is going to be the price of admission in the smart phone market.

 

As for rimm releasing that many phones, call me skeptical. :) let's look at the facts. the fact is they may not even have ONE phone out by the end of February. Lets see them deliver on one phone before saying they can deliver on six. the truth is this company is is somewhat lacking at the design and execution of products. It's one thing to use your PR department to juice the stock. Delivering high quality products in volume on a world wide basis is something entirely different. And rimm has not done that in years. Management has not been totally forthcoming on the product road map. Even if they were, they do not have a history of meeting deadlines. their history is having release dates slip and slip again.

 

Your argument did not help Palm and HP. rimm is touting bb10 in much the way Palm touted webOS. very good UX. very tight integration. Yet Palm failed miserably in the marketplace. Palm phones were hyped before they even came out, very much like z10 is being hyped. and the Palm stock jumped in the news vacuum. When the results came in, when the truth came out, Palm stock crashed, because nothing was holding it up but the dreams of their fan bois.

 

Hardware matters. As rimm will discover when reviewers finally get a chance to publish their thoughts. It doesn't matter as much to a company like apple, which has a massive ecosystem and a deep quality pool of apps. rimm has neither of those aspects going for it. it has a weak ecosystem and very few high quality apps. Samsung has Great hardware. the z10 phone will sell to hard core rimm supporters, the few that are left, that is. it will have zero appeal to iphone and galaxy/note users. none. people are not in the habit of paying more and getting less.

[VAL9000]

let's look at the facts. the fact is they may not even have ONE phone out by the end of February.

 

That's not a fact.  You're wrapping speculation inside of a fact.  What's you're saying is: It is factual that I am speculating about the delivery of a phone by the end of February.  Just sayin', if we're going to get all meta up in this thread, let's at least be honest about what we're meta-arguing about.

 

--

 

As an observer and sometimes participant in this thread, I think we're reaching "total fail" territory.  My feeling is that the consumer-facing tech investments should be paired with a separate section for "Technology Discussion".  There we can participate in all the usual bullshit around tech, without muddying the fundamental analysis that should come along with value investing.  If you were serious about trying to understand the intrinsic value of RIMM, AAPL, GOOG, MSFT and went to any of those threads, you would be completely lost/discouraged/sucked-into-a-vortex.  These threads are the written equivalent of a food fight with a running dialogue so far off the path of value investing that I think it's harming our common goal.

 

Does anyone else tend to agree here?  Is this minutiae actually important to valuation?  Parsad, any thoughts on this?

 

 

[Parsad]

let's look at the facts. the fact is they may not even have ONE phone out by the end of February.

 

That's not a fact.  You're wrapping speculation inside of a fact.  What's you're saying is: It is factual that I am speculating about the delivery of a phone by the end of February.  Just sayin', if we're going to get all meta up in this thread, let's at least be honest about what we're meta-arguing about.

 

--

 

As an observer and sometimes participant in this thread, I think we're reaching "total fail" territory.  My feeling is that the consumer-facing tech investments should be paired with a separate section for "Technology Discussion".  There we can participate in all the usual bullshit around tech, without muddying the fundamental analysis that should come along with value investing.  If you were serious about trying to understand the intrinsic value of RIMM, AAPL, GOOG, MSFT and went to any of those threads, you would be completely lost/discouraged/sucked-into-a-vortex.  These threads are the written equivalent of a food fight with a running dialogue so far off the path of value investing that I think it's harming our common goal.

 

Does anyone else tend to agree here?  Is this minutiae actually important to valuation?  Parsad, any thoughts on this?

 

Hi VAL,

 

I agree with you for the most part, but if you are discussing intrinsic value of any business, be it technology or otherwise, a discussion of the underlying fundamentals and economics of the business, the moats, the weaknesses, etc come into play.  Maybe these guys can start a thread for these core companies...Apple and RIM...in the "General Discussion" and discuss more of the technology aspect in there.  The only problem is that if anyone is researching those two companies, they aren't getting the full discussion (good or bad) because there would be two separate threads...one covering the valuation and one covering the actual business. 

 

It's up to you guys, since there are pros and cons for both.  I don't think elaborate discussions of BAC have made that thread any worse, and that is the biggest thread on the board.  Cheers!

[Palantir]

I disagree with Val. It is not all about "valuation", nor is it always most important thing for investing. This "minutiae" is crucial for determining the firm's business prospects and future competitive position. I don't think discussion of technology should ever be separated from discussions of "valuation".

 

Saying AAPL is "cheap" based on income statement and balance sheet metrics may well be irrelevant if its future pipeline and competitive positions are dead ends. Furthermore, many investors will simply not care that it is "cheap" if the business is at a dead end.

 

EDIT: Never mind. I see his point after reading some of the posts.

[txlaw]

umm crackberry is where all the leaks come from. it's where the initial leak of bb10 came from. it's where the first leak of z10 came from. the reason it's such a good source is because that's where all the ultra hard core fan bois hang out and they have every incentive to try and uncover what's going on with rimm. It's also operated by a very connected and well informed rimm fan boi who has ties inside the company.

 

Yes, but whenever specs for the unreleased BB10 phones are put onto crackberry.com, they are usually labeled as rumored.  If there is a particular post you can cite to (whether in the blog or in the forum) that actually discloses the exact chip SKU and cites some legit source (like an FCC report or RIM itself), I might change my mind.

 

If you had read crackberry and other sources like I did, you would have known that the z10 would have a dual core processor, and not a quad core as you Speculated. you can diminish the source all you want. But the truth is they are working on a larger screen phone. and they better be. Apple is now rumored to have a larger screen phone by mid year. Samsung is increasing the size of the screen on their two best selling smartphones which will be released later this year. A large screen phone is going to be the price of admission in the smart phone market.

 

It looks like you're probably citing speculation on crackberry.com that the z10 will have a dual core processor.  If you simply said, "it looks like" or "the rumor is" that the new phone will be dual core, I think that would be okay. 

 

But you always say erroneously say that "it is a fact" that X is the case, which is quite unfortunate.

 

As for rimm releasing that many phones, call me skeptical. :) let's look at the facts. the fact is they may not even have ONE phone out by the end of February. Lets see them deliver on one phone before saying they can deliver on six. the truth is this company is is somewhat lacking at the design and execution of products. It's one thing to use your PR department to juice the stock. Delivering high quality products in volume on a world wide basis is something entirely different. And rimm has not done that in years. Management has not been totally forthcoming on the product road map. Even if they were, they do not have a history of meeting deadlines. their history is having release dates slip and slip again.

 

"the fact is they may not even have ONE phone out by the end of February."

 

This is rumor and your speculation.  Nothing more I have to say on this point.

 

"Management has not been totally forthcoming on the product road map."

 

Don't see how you can say this, unless you're criticizing them from not having already disclosed all of the products they will be releasing this year.  But note that they will likely disclose a lot more info on the launch date.

 

So we don't have that long to actually get the legit info. 

 

Your argument did not help Palm and HP. rimm is touting bb10 in much the way Palm touted webOS. very good UX. very tight integration. Yet Palm failed miserably in the marketplace. Palm phones were hyped before they even came out, very much like z10 is being hyped. and the Palm stock jumped in the news vacuum. When the results came in, when the truth came out, Palm stock crashed, because nothing was holding it up but the dreams of their fan bois.

 

Well, the question is whether RIM has avoided a Palm-like situation with its actions.  Taking the time to get BB10 right.  Doing a good job marketing the product.  Getting multiple carriers on board.  And so on.

 

As I said a while back, the key for RIM success with BB10 would be to make sure it is not another Palm.  I think we agree on this point, but you appear to believe with certainty that they will be another Palm.

 

Time will tell.

 

Hardware matters. As rimm will discover when reviewers finally get a chance to publish their thoughts. It doesn't matter as much to a company like apple, which has a massive ecosystem and a deep quality pool of apps. rimm has neither of those aspects going for it. it has a weak ecosystem and very few high quality apps. Samsung has Great hardware. the z10 phone will sell to hard core rimm supporters, the few that are left, that is. it will have zero appeal to iphone and galaxy/note users. none. people are not in the habit of paying more and getting less.

 

I think RIM will have a lot of high quality apps, contrary to what you're saying.  We can revisit after the announcement at the end of the month.

 

Hardware matters but, IMO, not as much as you think it does.  UX matters.  Apps matter. 

 

You're making predictions, and that's fine.  Let's see if they come true.

[txlaw]

As an aside, yes your comments made me want to join, although I am the one at the last Pabrai meeting in California that asked him about RIMM and Prem Watsa, he was not interested in the company!

 

zenith, very cool.  Did Pabrai say anything other than that he was not interested in the company?

[Guest wellmont]

I usually don't spoon feed like this but I will make an exception this time.

 

The processor has been confirmed to be a Dual Core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4470 for the international model, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 in US and Canada.

 

http://www.phonearena.com/news/BlackBerry-Z10-gets-a-full-confirmed-spec-leak_id38796

 

ps: if I was long I would not be asking someone else to do my homework for me. :) I would want to know myself whether rim is using a dual core SOC from 2010, or a modern 4 core SOC in it's flagship phone.

 

"If there is a particular post you can cite to (whether in the blog or in the forum) that actually discloses the exact chip SKU and cites some legit source (like an FCC report or RIM itself), I might change my mind."

 

[txlaw]

I usually don't spoon feed like this but I will make an exception this time.

 

The processor has been confirmed to be a Dual Core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4470 for the international model, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 in US and Canada.

 

http://www.phonearena.com/news/BlackBerry-Z10-gets-a-full-confirmed-spec-leak_id38796

 

Haha. Thanks for the "spoon feeding."  You're a real stand up guy.  A real gentleman.  :)

 

So it looks like you may be right on it having a dual core processor.  Doesn't really matter that much in terms of the thesis, but you should pat yourself on the back.

[txlaw]

As an observer and sometimes participant in this thread, I think we're reaching "total fail" territory.  My feeling is that the consumer-facing tech investments should be paired with a separate section for "Technology Discussion".  There we can participate in all the usual bullshit around tech, without muddying the fundamental analysis that should come along with value investing.  If you were serious about trying to understand the intrinsic value of RIMM, AAPL, GOOG, MSFT and went to any of those threads, you would be completely lost/discouraged/sucked-into-a-vortex.  These threads are the written equivalent of a food fight with a running dialogue so far off the path of value investing that I think it's harming our common goal.

 

Does anyone else tend to agree here?  Is this minutiae actually important to valuation?  Parsad, any thoughts on this?

 

Val, it's becoming a pissing contest, and it's partly my fault. 

 

I will try to avoid falling into that trap.  Sorry.

[zenith]

However with BB10 all that changed. I am very excited about the prospect of having one phone and the ability to check emails, intranet sites and related client info on the enterprise side as well as the personal side where it is private. How many others like me are there out there?

 

 

I can guarantee that rimm is not the only one who can do that. in fact I talked to a guy the other day who works in the mobile industry at the infrastructure level. He says the C suite in USA is virtually 100% IOS. they simply told the CIO "make it work".

 

He said bb would be gone in five years.  if you think that bb10 is some radical new platform that does things other phones can't do, you will likely be bitterly disappointed to learn the truth when the phone is released sometime in late March. :) remember, this is the company that when it released the Playbook, did not even have working email software on it at launch. :)

 

Listen, I appreciate the other side of an investment and if you can make some good counterpoints we can have a valid discussion. There is obviously risks with any company, but you are making opinions and believing they are fact.

I enjoy reading your posts for comical value. What you are referring to is the products from VMware, Red Bend will also compete with offerings from Good Technology Inc., AirWatch LLC, MobileIron Inc., Citrix Systems Inc. (CTXS) and Enterproid Inc. All of these require the user to check 2 seperate email and calendar accounts.

 

Blackberry Balance allows for a corporate app store where users can install corporate apps, as well as consumer apps from the public BlackBerry App World store. In addtion many of the apps can be shared on the personal and entriprise side. There are many other differances and I think they will be succesfull.

 

I agree we should keep this this discussion on a investment perspective.  In that regard the recent announcement of potential licsensing of BB10 and sale of hardare divison after BB10 is launched. The stock is up another 10% or so in the TSX today. With book value at around $18 this still provides a good entry point and more importantly Fairfax is now profitable.

[zenith]

As an aside, yes your comments made me want to join, although I am the one at the last Pabrai meeting in California that asked him about RIMM and Prem Watsa, he was not interested in the company!

 

zenith, very cool.  Did Pabrai say anything other than that he was not interested in the company?

 

See below (my name is Nick), Prasad can verify my name is the same ::) as well as my business partner who was with me, Kirk, CFA

 

Q: Nick from Los Angeles. One of the individuals on the board with you in Dakshana, is Prem Watsa. He had recent purchases of a company called Research In Motion. Can you comment about what your thoughts are on Research In Motion?

A: The Research In Motion question is one that you should pose directly to Mr. Watsa. There was a question on them at the Fairfax Annual Meeting last year and there are transcripts of the meeting on the web. Fairfax has made comments on why they invested in RIM. I can just tell you that I have never invested in RIM, and I would probably never invest in RIM. I can’t think of any price at which I would have an interest. I would also say I just talked about Templeton and I talked about the one in three decisions being mistakes. I don’t know whether RIM would turn out to be a mistake for Prem or not in the end, but even the very best value investors will have a healthy error rate. Even after they have that error rate, they will do very well. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway, they have 75 businesses that are wholly owned and many of those businesses that were bought by Berkshire were clearly mistakes. CORT furniture was a mistake. The shoe company they bought was a mistake. They had a lot of trouble in NetJets - probably a mistake. They had a lot of trouble with Gen Re. That was turned around but if they didn’t have Munger and Buffett with their skills, that probably would have been a mistake. And then a lot of their retail operations are mistakes. Warren probably expects a business to generate an 8% or 10% return pre-tax. My guess is that at least 25 of those 75 businesses don’t generate 10% pre-tax on average over the cycle. But, he has been right. If you look at each of those 75 investments as being a discrete decision, he may have a 1/3 or more error rate on those individual decisions. But, for example, Burlington Northern is a massive bet and probably pays off really well. In the case of Fairfax, you can look at their balance sheet and you can look at the size of the RIM bet. RIM can go to zero, and it doesn’t make much difference to Fairfax in terms of the size of the balance sheet. The hit that they’re going to take in terms of book value, even if RIM were to go to zero is pretty muted. They can be right on RIM and they can be wrong on RIM. Either case, they’ll probably end up still having a decent record.

 

 

The link to the entire transcript is below, btw the stock closed at $7.43 that Friday before the event. Enjoy!

 

http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2012-Annual-Meeting-Transcript.pdf

[mrvlad0]

RIM Jumps After CEO Says Hardware Sale Possible

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-21/rim-jumps-after-ceo-says-hardware-sale-possible-toronto-mover.html

 

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) jumped to to its highest since late 2011 after its chief executive officer said the BlackBerry maker is considering strategic options including a sale of its hardware production unit.

 

Possibilities include “the sale of hardware production as well as licensing of our software,” CEO Thorsten Heins was reported as saying in an interview

[berkshiremystery]

RIM Jumps After CEO Says Hardware Sale Possible

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-21/rim-jumps-after-ceo-says-hardware-sale-possible-toronto-mover.html

 

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) jumped to to its highest since late 2011 after its chief executive officer said the BlackBerry maker is considering strategic options including a sale of its hardware production unit.

 

Possibilities include “the sale of hardware production as well as licensing of our software,” CEO Thorsten Heins was reported as saying in an interview

 

I already noticed while the US markets have been closed yesterday, RIMM increased in Toronto.

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5d&s=RIM.TO&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=RIMM&ql=1

[txlaw]

RIM Jumps After CEO Says Hardware Sale Possible

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-21/rim-jumps-after-ceo-says-hardware-sale-possible-toronto-mover.html

 

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) jumped to to its highest since late 2011 after its chief executive officer said the BlackBerry maker is considering strategic options including a sale of its hardware production unit.

 

Possibilities include “the sale of hardware production as well as licensing of our software,” CEO Thorsten Heins was reported as saying in an interview

 

Truthfully, this is not really something new.  RIM has already said in the past that licensing their software and even selling the hardware ops was on the table.  I believe they said this after or just before they hired JPM and RBC for their strategic review.

 

However, what this should do is drive home the point that software is what matters for RIM, not hardware.  So long as BB10 works smoothly on the hardware that it runs on -- whether that is  hardware from RIM, or from a licensee -- there is a full feature set, and there are good apps,  specs won't matter so much.

 

Ultimately, the success of BB10 rides on whether people worldwide (not just in NA) think the OS is competitive with Android, iOS, and Windows.  RIM has done the very best they can to be the anti-Palm, IMO. 

 

Now it's time to sit back, grab some popcorn, and watch this thing unfold.

[berkshiremystery]

RIMM Surges 9%: Scotia Ups to Buy on BB10 Advantages

2013-01-22 Barron's

 

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2013/01/22/rimm-surges-9-scotia-ups-to-buy-on-bb10-advantages/?mod=yahoobarrons

 

Papageorgiou writes that if the company can sell 29 million BlackBerrys this fiscal year starting in March, it could produce $4.13 per share in profit, which would be a dramatic reversal from projected losses of $1.15 per share this fiscal year

 

Papageorgiou is counting on a dramatic reversal of hardware gross profit, and also that RIM will add to its 80 million or so subscribers:

 

 

 

[ericd1]

You never know...

 

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3911632/lenovo-interested-in-rim

[fareastwarriors]

Lenovo Says RIM Bid Among Options to Boost Mobile Unit

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-24/lenovo-says-rim-bid-among-options-to-boost-mobile-unit.html

 

Lenovo Group Ltd. (992) is assessing potential acquisition targets and strategic alliances, including a deal with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM), as the second-largest producer of personal computers tries to bolster its mobile-device business.

 

“We are looking at all opportunities -- RIM and many others,” Chief Financial Officer Wong Wai Ming said yesterday in an interview at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “We’ll have no hesitation if the right opportunity comes along that could benefit us and shareholders.”

[berkshiremystery]

RIM: Thorsten Heins Makes Sure Nothing Is Lost In The Translation

2013-01-25 SeekingAlpha.com

 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1133781-rim-thorsten-heins-makes-sure-nothing-is-lost-in-the-translation?source=yahoo

 

[stahleyp]

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/25/technology/mobile/rim-blackberry-super-bowl/index.html?iid=HP_MPM

 

RIM to advertise BlackBerry 10 during Super Bowl

 

 

[Shawn]

For about a year now I had to walk around with egg on my face because of RIM lol. I didn't care but wow, I didn't expect RIM to jump up the way it did. Seems like Mr.Market changed his mind or something haha. I thought it would take at least a good 2 or 3 years before the stock even turned around and convinced the street it wasn't finished.

 

Currently RIM is my largest investment.... not that there's anything wrong with that but I wasn't expecting that you know ? I'm not complaining lol.

 

Ooohh Wall Street smh.....

[txlaw]

Nice little synopsis of the RIM story up until now:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/rim-looks-to-revitalize-blackberry-brand-with-bb10-1.1131521

 

Thorsten Heins on CNBC:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100407816

 

Rundown of developer tools for BB10:

http://www.zdnet.com/blackberry-10-how-rim-is-reaching-out-to-developers-7000010084/

 

 

[txlaw]

Cnet article on Alec Saunders' campaign to woo developers to BB10:

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57565905-94/meet-the-man-who-would-make-blackberry-apps-cool/

[eclecticvalue]

Hey scc, good job holding on to RIM. I am sure it was difficult. I want to ask when you were investing in RIM. Did you think that all RIM needed to do was stop the "bleeding" in order for the stock price go back up?

[Guest valueInv]

New WSJ article on RIMM:

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323644904578269652991223058.html

[txlaw]

In case anyone's interested or curious:

http://tremolo.edgesuite.net/blackberry_experience_launch/desktop_dvr/index.html