BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by CROCKD »

A review of the new Q10
Q10 a better BlackBerry than Z10
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by CROCKD »

Heins does not see a future for tablets.
Presumably this means that he sees the mobile computing space being occupied by Smart Phones.
On the other hand there will be a need for tablets such as eReaders as I do not see people being satisfied with trying to read a book on the go on a smart phone screen.
Also as the system and menu on a recent Westjet flight was very poor I watched "A Fish Called Wanda" which I had loaded onto my tablet. I just would not watch movies and other visual items on a small phone screen.
BlackBerry CEO questions tablets’ future
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by FinEcon »

CROCKD wrote:Heins does not see a future for tablets.
Presumably this means that he sees the mobile computing space being occupied by Smart Phones.
On the other hand there will be a need for tablets such as eReaders as I do not see people being satisfied with trying to read a book on the go on a smart phone screen.
Also as the system and menu on a recent Westjet flight was very poor I watched "A Fish Called Wanda" which I had loaded onto my tablet. I just would not watch movies and other visual items on a small phone screen.
BlackBerry CEO questions tablets’ future
IMO, he means tablets in their currrent forms and uses. I don't know about you but I would much rather 'beam' media content from the phone to a pair of dark glasses & headphones which provided a truly immersive hd theatre-like experience. I think it will the model will shift towards one computing device, many displays as opposed to the current model of many computing devices, many desplays. That pretty much nixes out 'tablets' as they become (relatively) dumb displays in sizes that vary with many specific uses.
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by A1Stocktrader »

How come this board is so quiet? Money to be made and lost long and short on BB, fun times, higher she goes now imho!
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by IdOp »

The encryption methods presently being used to secure Internet connections are under threat from increasingly powerful attacks, as well as advances in crypto math. The likely next generation of stronger encryption is based on ECC (elliptic curve cryptography). One of RIM BlackBerry's subsidiaries, Certicom, holds key patents for their implementation of ECC. Should trust in current security schemes collapse in the near future, the patents could hold significant value for BlackBerry. But it could also become a case of "Dude, where's my patent?"

Math Advances Raise the Prospect of an Internet Security Crisis
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by tidal »

IdOp wrote:The encryption methods presently being used to secure Internet connections are under threat from increasingly powerful attacks, as well as advances in crypto math. The likely next generation of stronger encryption is based on ECC (elliptic curve cryptography). One of RIM BlackBerry's subsidiaries, Certicom, holds key patents for their implementation of ECC. Should trust in current security schemes collapse in the near future, the patents could hold significant value for BlackBerry. But it could also become a case of "Dude, where's my patent?"

Math Advances Raise the Prospect of an Internet Security Crisis
Does anyone offhand know exactly what the patents Certicom holds pertain to?

The basics of ECC are fairly straightforward and public domain. In 2000 or so, I helped fund a start-up that included people that - literally - wrote the book on ECC, and who had done significant work for Certicom. They were certain that they could implement their own ECC and not infringe on the Certicom patents.

Are the Certicom patents mostly to do with technical / trade implementation? Any specifics?

"Our" ECC was never put to that patent test, although we were leaning towards being willing and prepared to challenge on this. I think the company we sold to eventually licenced Certicom's ECC instead, since it was not the core part of our offering. But I still remember how certain these engineers were that they could implement it independently and not infringe... And there were other mathematicians there who were proposing work on even higher-order encryption schemes using Abelian groups.
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by newguy »

I don't see how math gets patented in the first place. Anyway I read about this a long time ago and dismissed it. Mind you I also recently read about google/nasa buying the first quantum computer (from a B.C. company). Maybe google will use the multi million dollar computer for a few years straight to break my existing encryption so they can get my gmail password.

EC encryption just adds more time for some types of crack, not really a worry for me yet. The current billion years of CPU time needed is probably longer than I'll live anyway.

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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by IdOp »

tidal wrote:Does anyone offhand know exactly what the patents Certicom holds pertain to?
...
Are the Certicom patents mostly to do with technical / trade implementation? Any specifics?
Good questions and I don't know the answer. I was also wondering how hard it would be to create an independent implementation. Maybe it's just that Certicom has a solution ready, proven and waiting to go if the need should arise quickly. Or maybe the opinion about its possible value is just wrong.
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by newguy »

I just checked and TD is using a RSA-2048 bit public key. Factor this!

BTW that's an RSA challenge number, not TD's public key but I can give you that too if you want. According to RSA the 768 bit key was factored in 2000 years of opteron 2.2 ghz cpu time.

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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by IdOp »

newguy wrote:I just checked and TD is using a RSA-2048 bit public key.
Will all e-commerce sites one might use be that secure though?

Also, while the factoring problem is still difficult, solving it gives the ability to decrypt the whole channel of communication. But doing that may be much more than the bad guys need to do. Interestingly, there's a recent attack on secure HTTPS, which relies in part on its combination with compression (as is typical), to extract sensitive data pieces from the channel:
Gone in 30 seconds: New attack plucks secrets from HTTPS-protected pages
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by Bylo Selhi »

When Uncle Sam starts throwing his weight around the algorithm and number of bits suddenly become mootmute. The Snowden effect: U.S. government demands cast chill on encrypted e-mail industry
An encrypted e-mail service believed to have been used by American fugitive Edward Snowden shut down abruptly on Thursday amid a legal fight that appeared to involve U.S. government attempts to win access to customer information. “I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit,” Lavabit LLC owner Ladar Levison wrote in a letter that was posted on the Texas-based company’s website on Thursday...

“All of this tells us the same lesson: almost nothing we do on the Internet can be protected from government prying and spying,” said Michael Ratner, a U.S. lawyer who has worked for anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, a Snowden ally. “To talk privately, meetings will need to take place in large parks with plenty of tree cover.”
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Idle [speculation] no more: BlackBerry puts itself up for sale
BlackBerry' Ltd.s board of directors has formed a special committee to explore “strategic alternatives,” including the possible sale of the company. The five-person committee, which includes BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, will look at a host of options, such as joint partnerships or alliances with other companies, in an attempt to increase shareholder value and boost sales of the company's new BlackBerry 10 smartphones...

Those alternatives may well feature significant involvement from BlackBerry's largest shareholder, Fairfax Financial. The firm's CEO, Prem Watsa, announced on Monday that he will resign from BlackBerry's board of directors due to a potential conflict of interest.
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by IdOp »

That is soooooo 2012
RIM wrote:... partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives.
;)
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by Bylo Selhi »

In 2012 "partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives" were a bit premature considering that RIM had yet to launch their new BB10 handsets. (Getting the BB10 line out the door was job one.) RIM's acquiescence to pressure from analyststhe peanut gallery to explore such opportunities back then is just one example of why they want to go private now.
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Re: Going "private"

Post by Wallace »

Just ask a question on FWF and prepare to be enlightened! Thanks for all the excellent input and comments.

Am I correct in assuming that the interest by private investors means that they will be dedicated to the continuing success of the company (although it may change in focus and size) rather than its shredding simply to produce profitable assets for speculators? And that one of the reasons for going private is to avoid a hostile takeover by "vulture" firms? (I'm pretty naive on the ins and outs of the corporate jungle).

BB is still selling about 70 million Blackberries a year and has its Enterprise server system. There has to be a way the company can find a niche and remain profitable within it. I don't think Heins has any intention of allowing BB to wither to zero the way Nortel did.
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Re: Going "private"

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Wallace wrote:Am I correct in assuming that the interest by private investors means that they will be dedicated to the continuing success of the company (although it may change in focus and size) rather than its shredding simply to produce profitable assets for speculators? And that one of the reasons for going private is to avoid a hostile takeover by "vulture" firms? (I'm pretty naive on the ins and outs of the corporate jungle).
This is just my opinion but FWIW, I think so. BB has a bunch of assets that are worth more than is reflected in the current share price.

First there are the niche handset business, the large share in certain markets, e.g. security/governments, mechanical keyboards and in developing markets, the e-mail server and handset management business, etc. Even if it's shrinking and even if the shrinkage can't be fully arrested, there's a nice cash cow for years to come.

Second, there's the technology which includes security/encryption, the operating system QNX, the automotive market, etc.

Third, is the patent portfolio. BB knows only too well the value of a single, crucial patent. Even if they don't become patent trolls, their patents should provide a nice royalty revenue stream for years to come.
I don't think Heins has any intention of allowing BB to wither to zero the way Nortel did.
Nor do I. It's far too early for that in any case. In my opinion the move to privatize, assuming a deal gets done, which isn't a certainty either, will give Heins the space and time he needs to restructure the business. Unlike Nortel, he's not trying to do this in the aftermath of the Internet bubble. Also unlike Nortel's senior management (and arguably BB's previous senior management), there's no evidence that he's not up to the task.

That said, he emphasized during the AGM that BB remains a very risky business. As confident as he is that he can turn things around, he's dealing with an ailing company in a highly competitive industry that moves at lightning speeds.

There's been a lot of negativity about BB by analysts and in the media. A lot is deserved, but not all. That negativity is reflected in the stock price. Many of the usual "vultures" may be prevented from buying BB because they're foreign. The federal government has already given signals that they'd prefer to keep BB in Canadian hands.

I have no idea how much the various businesses I listed above are worth. Prem Watsa is regarded at the Warren Buffett of the north. If he sees value and opportunity at these depressed levels and he's prepared to put his money where his mouth is, despite the extremely high risk, then let's give Heins a chance to carry out his plan, even if I may have been squeezed out as a [very tiny] shareholder by the time he gets to complete it.
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Re: Going "private"

Post by kcowan »

I am not an expert on business devices anymore, but I do know that there is several good corporate infrastructures that rival BBM for Apple and Android users. So the claim that they have any exclusive there was squandered a couple of years ago. It will remain a viable alternative, especially for corporations who want to continue to use BB handsets.

And the idea of separating business and personal use on the handset seems to be exclusive at present.
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Re: Going "private"

Post by Shurville »

kcowan wrote: but my conclusion is that Heins wants to get out of the kitchen because of the heat. Part of that is all his employees who remember $146 and will never be happy with $10!
Obviously this guy Heins was a very poor choise. He had no track record of successful 'turn-arounds".Once he took over... the few bright lights there that had not already moved on to the Silicone Valley/Seattle areas started to leave.Typical of unsuccessful CEO's he is looking for the best personal 'cash-out"imo.
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Re: Going "private"

Post by ghariton »

The profitability of BB and its competitors depends in large part on the success of the downstream service providers. So far these service providers have done very well. But there is a risk that competition will intensify and that markets are becoming mature (i.e. less growth). If so, BB and its competitors will be fighting over a market whose growth is slowing appreciably.

Or not. But that's essentially what happened to Nortel AND its competitors. Lucent, Alcatel, Siemens -- all got creamed when competition intensified in the telephony market.

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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by A1Stocktrader »

Are we having fun trading BB? Wow, what a whipsaw trading long and short this is. Be careful and keep you stick on the ice. I was long yesterday near the close only to watch BB plunge, what a rigged game, regardless, I held on overnight, something I try my best to never do, albeit I thought something was fishy. Nice to see BB up premarket and lots of positive news on Prem with targets of 14 to 20$. Good luck everyone, albeit don't mean I am holding long. I trade the trend on everything I trade, long and short. Daytrader :thumbsup:
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by adrian2 »

A1Stocktrader wrote:what a rigged game
Why are you in the game if it's so rigged?
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by deaddog »

adrian2 wrote:
A1Stocktrader wrote:what a rigged game
Why are you in the game if it's so rigged?
Only losers complain about a rigged game. Winners take advantage of them. :lol:
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by parvus »

A1Stocktrader wrote:Are we having fun trading BB? Wow, what a whipsaw trading long and short this is. Be careful and keep you stick on the ice. I was long yesterday near the close only to watch BB plunge, what a rigged game, regardless, I held on overnight, something I try my best to never do, albeit I thought something was fishy. Nice to see BB up premarket and lots of positive news on Prem with targets of 14 to 20$. Good luck everyone, albeit don't mean I am holding long. I trade the trend on everything I trade, long and short. Daytrader :thumbsup:
Are you making decisions just by charts? There are trading anomalies you should be aware of: don't trade at the open or just before the close, if you're day-trading. The first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes of the day experience heavy trading as institutions and ETFs move large volumes to open/close their positions -- all perfectly legit, and meaningless in the long-term, but potentially perilous for a day trader.
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Re: BlackBerry (Symbol-BB) formerly Research in Motion (RIM)

Post by A1Stocktrader »

[quote="parvus"][quote="A1Stocktrader"]Are we having fun trading BB? Wow, what a whipsaw trading long and short this is. Be careful and keep you stick on the ice. I was long yesterday near the close only to watch BB plunge, what a rigged game, regardless, I held on overnight, something I try my best to never do, albeit I thought something was fishy. Nice to see BB up premarket and lots of positive news on Prem with targets of 14 to 20$. Good luck everyone, albeit don't mean I am holding long. I trade the trend on everything I trade, long and short. Daytrader :thumbsup:[/quote]
Are you making decisions just by charts? There are trading anomalies you should be aware of: don't trade at the open or just before the close, if you're day-trading. The first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes of the day experience heavy trading as institutions and ETFs move large volumes to open/close their positions -- all perfectly legit, and meaningless in the long-term, but potentially perilous for a day trader.[/quote]

Hi Parvus, Ya think? I disagree. I made 13.4% on BB this past Tuesday on my margin account within 6 minutes and 33 seconds of the TSX open.

To each their own.

I have my due diligence benchmarks, no doubt others do to.

All the best :thumbsup:
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