BlackBerry Ltd (BBRY) May Have Announced The Last Nail In Its Coffin

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BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) shares plummeted on Friday when the company announced several pieces of bad news. It’s cutting 4,500 jobs, it sold less than 4 million smartphones during the last quarter and it posted almost $1 billion in operating losses for the quarter.

BlackBerry Ltd (BBRY) May Have Announced The Last Nail In Its Coffin

Enterprise probably won’t save BlackBerry

The struggling Canadian company also announced on Friday that it would refocus its efforts on the enterprise segment instead of trying to chase consumers down the road. Unfortunately though, it is likely coming too late, just as its newly redesigned operating system did. BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) has lost its relevance in the smartphone race, and it doesn’t look like there’s anything that the company can do to get it back.

The preannounced second fiscal quarter results revealed that most of the smartphones the company did ship during the quarter were BlackBerry 7 devices. So it certainly seems like the company has its target customer pegged: people living in the past who don’t like change. Unfortunately there are fewer and fewer of those people in the world every day.

BlackBerry and emerging markets

The BlackBerry 10 operating system has just received a frosty reception in general, particularly as the company deserted its previous niche. In addition to abandoning loyal enterprise and QWERTY keyboard fanatics with the BlackBerry Z10, the company also ditched emerging markets. The price tag on that handset was aimed at the high-end of the market where Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung are the rulers.

There’s something to be said for knowing your place and sticking with it, but unfortunately BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) tried to bite off more than it can chew. It wasn’t happy with being a niche product, so it tried to face off with the big boys by offering something that wasn’t any better than what they had. It’s a strategy that just doesn’t work.

We’ve been counting down the days until BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) is bankrupt, and now it looks like the clock just sped up.  They always say go big or go home. In this case it looks like BlackBerry is going home.

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