BlackBerry Ltd May Turn Into Classic Turnaround Story

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BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) may create a Classic turnaround story, says a report from Seeking Alpha by Michael Blair. By launching a complete professional device like Passport, and with the upcoming relaunch of the BlackBerry Classic with its beloved track-pad and “Back” button, Blair believes the company “may turn in to a ‘Classic’ turnaround story.”

BlackBerry still popular

Blair believes that Classic will be able to carve a niche for itself in the market, and reignite the spark among the once loyal Blackberry customers in Canada, Indonesia and South Africa, where BlackBerry devices are still relatively popular. Indonesia is one country where people are still holding on to their BlackBerry devices, according to the a recent Ericsson chart of operating systems in use in several Asian markets. A chart from the On Device research shows that Indonesian smartphone users are fond of chatting, and besides WhatsApp, they prefer BBM as the second choice.

The Waterloo Ontario-based company does not need to ship a large number of Classic smartphones to earning revenue. The company has also made some significant updates to BBM by allowing users to delete as well as send self-destructing messages, similar to SnapChat. Also, the company noted that it has 100 million BBM active users across the world, which means that the obvious choice for many of these users would be Blackberry Classic, believes Blair.

Classic to go well with enterprise users

According Blair, the Classic will be priced at $499, which will provide BlackBerry with a margin of 35% or more. If around 3 million of the devices are sold in 2015, this would add $1.5 billion to sales and over $500 million to margin for Blackberry. Both Passport and Classic could garner sales worth $3 billion, and gross margin of $1 billion in 2015 provided both sells at the 3 million unit pace. The sales figures of BlackBerry phones are not known yet, but the initial order of 200,000 Passports within a few days of its launch suggests BlackBerry still has a lot of customers.

Referring to BlackBerry as “a speculation, pure and simple,” Blair says that the Canadian firm does not pose a threat to the Apple iPhone or Samsung range of phones, and neither is it the industry leader anymore, which makes investing in the company guess work. However, enterprise customers fond of keyboards and giving importance to security will likely go for the Classic.

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