Blackberry is “doomed to fail” in its latest product path, suggests Rosenblatt Securities analyst Brian Blair. The analyst has a price target of $7 on the Canadian firm, which is currently trading at more than $9.
No opportunity in hardware business
Rosenblatt thinks the Canadian smartphone maker should abandon its hardware business altogether and focus on the software opportunities in the mobile and non-mobile sectors.
“BlackBerry’s latest product path is doomed to fail for the same reasons BlackBerry’s hardware efforts have fallen short over the last three years,” Blair noted.
According to the analyst, the path to success is skipping the hardware market and focusing on getting itself a space in Android and iOS with BlackBerry Messenger. If the company decides to exit the hardware market, it can focus on R&D and capitalize on its IP, which shareholders will like.
Why is BlackBerry failing in hardware?
Talking about the Leap smartphone, Blair noted that the market has seen such stunts before, and the last time it was called the Z10, which could not sell as many units as expected to boost BlackBerry’s fundamentals. the Leap will suffer the same fate even though it is more elegant and has specifications that can stand in competition with other smartphones in the market, he believes. However, the fact remains unchanged that BlackBerry is still clinging to an ecosystem that consumers and enterprise customers are not interested in using.
Blair also mentioned that BlackBerry does not have a clear goal set, and a touchscreen phone is the outcome of such an indecisive track. Blair believes BlackBerry could have done better in emerging markets with low-cost smartphones, but that opportunity has also faded away with Android taking the spot.
Also there are very limited apps, discouraging users from getting a BlackBerry. The Canadian smartphone maker has failed to garner substantial volume in the market and has no standardization of a single screen size across its device offerings. Therefore, developers are reluctant in developing apps for the platform as they get meager incentives.
On Tuesday, Blackberry shares closed flat at $9.52, while year to date, the stock is down by over 13%.
