BlackBerry is “dead money,” and there is nothing left in the company that will drive it, believes Strategic Analysis Corporation Chairman Ross Healy. On Thursday, BlackBerry shares closed down 1.53% at $7.10.
No driving pillars left for BlackBerry
On Thursday on BNN’s Market Call show, he said, “The pillars that were driving the company aren’t anymore…maybe except for the QNX [operating system]. You’re left with the fact that the big value of this company is basically contracts with governments who love the security of BlackBerry.”
BlackBerry, which is moving further away from the phone business, is trying to make a place for itself in the heavily-saturated self-driving car market. However, Ross suggests that this will only lead to further crumbling of the company’s pillars.
Healy once invested in the Canadian firm, but he now says, “Finally we just said we just have to abandon ship. [CEO] John Chen has had a wonderful past, but I think he’s finally been dealt a hand that he can’t bluff at the table and he can’t win because he’s got a high straight.”
Healy believes that a takeover is necessary, and it would be a really good opportunity. Referring to Apple and IBM, he said that even to this day, he is baffled why no one has stepped in to take it over despite BlackBerry’s small market capital. He said that as an acquisition, BlackBerry would serve as a tremendous springboard for future growth.
T-Mobile rolls out January security patch for the Priv
In other BlackBerry news, an over-the-air update is now being officially rolling out to all owners of the T-Mobile-branded BlackBerry Priv. The update includes Google’s official Android Security Patch for January.
The security patch includes fixes for a number of known vulnerabilities across Android versions, including privilege escalations in various apps and kernel and driver security holes in blobs from various vendors like Qualcomm, MediaTek and NVIDIA.
There are no fixes, features or tweaks contained in the update apart from the January security patch. There are no actual feature tweaks in the update, and it only contains a patch that can be applied on top of the phone’s current software. Hence, it was possible to roll it out fairly quickly, notes AndroidHeadlines.
The update has been available for a little while for owners of the unlocked Priv, in line with BlackBerry’s commitment to device security. AT&T’s January security patch for the Priv has been released already, meaning that Verizon is the last holdout.
