Blackberry which company

The challenge now is to grow rapidly in its new lines of business. Chen is building on BlackBerry's vaunted reputation for data security and on strategic acquisitions of the technology he needs.

It's worked for him before. Chen noted that Sybase's database code was unusually compact and decided to focus where his competitors couldn't fit — emerging mobile devices like the Palm Pilot and the Sharp Zaurus. These early devices had very limited memory; they couldn't accommodate a 20MB database, but they could handle KB.

He's being asked to do it all again at BlackBerry. Chen jokes that he accepted the job in a moment of weakness. He had spent a year at private-equity powerhouse Silver Lake after leaving SAP before concluding he was better suited for an operating role. Its mobile network technology is considered one of the most secure and is a favorite of corporations and governments, including all seven members of the G7. It is an important player in the Internet of Things IoT — a boon, since Gartner says it expects to see 20 billion internet-connected things by , from vending machines and jet engines to connected cars.

BlackBerry's QNX automotive software is embedded in million vehicles, where protection from hacking is a safety issue. With that in mind, Chen wooed and purchased Cylance , a security software start-up that uses artificial intelligence to identify and disarm threats. At McAfee they had a staff of 1, workers flagging , malware signatures a day, but , were coming in. The volume of dangerous software has since expanded to 1.

Sign in. Sign in to view your mail. Finance Home. BlackBerry Limited BB. Currency in USD. Add to watchlist. Amounts are as of December 31, and compensation values are for the last fiscal year ending on that date. Pay is salary, bonuses, etc. Cybersecurity Malware Ransomware Insider Threats. Or more vulnerable. Cybersecurity has failed to keep up, because it fails to look ahead. Our intelligent security pairs artificial intelligence with machine learning to proactively protect your system from cyberthreats.

Cyber Suite. Cylance has been the largest acquisition by BlackBerry to date. It was not the first acquisition in the sector, but a useful one: BlackBerry had extensive expertise in secure communications and tended to work with large enterprise clients.

Cylance, on the other hand, provides threat preventative software to SMEs, complementing the existing offering. Source: Motley Fool. So why was BlackBerry so battered by investors, despite still showing growth in the double digits?

Investors have lost patience with the speed of change and are acutely aware of how difficult it is to pivot such a large business and for the second time, at that: BlackBerry started out as Research in Motion, making software for secure communications, and briefly became the most valuable company in Canada.

Pivoting a company is notoriously hard, and while there are illustrious examples of companies that have done so successfully, like YouTube or Slack, there are similarly many, like Fred Wilson, that do not see pivoting as a strategy that is always sound. After what happened to BlackBerry over the years, now seems like a better time for recovery than it has been in many years. There are certainly a lot of strengths in the strategy pursued by BlackBerry, such as understanding the client base that it is best positioned to serve, as well as where those strengths could play in the future, such as the IoT and EoT space.

The sheer size of BlackBerry, however, certainly makes it even tougher to execute a reinvention of this magnitude successfully. We will be watching alongside market participants. John Chen announced that the company would cease to make mobile phones in Instead, the company would design phones and then license their production to local companies in the markets where it still had some traction: India, with Optiemus; TCL, in the US; and globally, and Merah Putih for Indonesia.

Cylance, on the other hand, provides threat preventative software to SMEs. BlackBerry lost out to Apple and Samsung for dominance of the smartphone market. Subscription implies consent to our privacy policy. Thank you!