BlackBerry (BBRY) may follow the lead of other troubled tech companies by going private in an effort to turn its business around without the scrutiny of shareholders who want quarterly progress. Reuters is reporting that BlackBerry has held recent discussions with Silver Lake Partners, the same private equity firm that is helping Michael Dell try to buy back the company he founded in his college dorm room 30 years ago.
The Z10, BlackBerry’s first touchscreen smartphone, finally hit the market early this year but reviews have been mixed and sales have been sluggish. During the second quarter, BlackBerry launched the Q10, a smartphone that includes both a touchscreen and a keypad. In addition, the company still sells traditional BlackBerry phones that use a keypad exclusively.
According to IDC, BlackBerry shipped 6.8 million smartphones during the second quarter, fewer than 3% of the smartphones sold worldwide. During all of 2012, BlackBerry sold 32.5 million smartphones, about the same number Apple typically sells in a single quarter. Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, LG, Huawei, ZTE, Nokia and Yulong all sold more smartphones during the second quarter than BlackBerry did, according to company reports and analyst estimates.
BlackBerry maintains strong relationships with many important enterprise and government customers, and recently announced that its new Z10 and Q10 smartphones have been approved for use on the U.S. Department of Defense network. However, the company has less clout with consumers, who constitute a growing share of the smartphone market. As more companies allow employees to bring their own devices into the workplace and connect them to the network, iPhones, iPads and Android devices are taking share away from BlackBerry in enterprise environments.
Recognizing that its future as a handset manufacturer may be in jeopardy, BlackBerry decided this year to make its popular BBM Messenger app available for both iOS and Android. The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm earlier this year, but so far BBM has not appeared on either of the competing platforms.
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