The obituary for BlackBerry as a smartphone pioneer has been written countless times before. But after pivoting its business away from devices and toward the software that powers them, reports of the company’s death are proving to be premature.
BlackBerry’s QNX software, which tracks real-time data for features like Google maps, GPS navigation, traffic monitoring and infotainment systems, is already embedded in millions of cars on the road today.
And the company recently partnered with Amazon to create BlackBerry Ivy, a new cloud-based platform that takes things a step further into the realm of self-driving technology, collecting real-time data and making on-the-fly recommendations for everything from dangerous road conditions to the location of the nearest electric charging or gas stations.
“You can look at things like traffic congestion or offering new services to your customers, like being able to recommend where there’s an open parking space, based on where you’re at,” is how Sarah Tatsis, who heads up the program at BlackBerry, describes it.
Pinning hopes to an automotive future
The company has high hopes for the technology, but acknowledged it’s not perfect in a news release last week. In a blow to its stellar reputation for security, BlackBerry revealed that it had found a potential vulnerability in versions of QNX that came out prior to 2012.
While versions since then aren’t impacted and the company said it’s “not aware of any exploitation of this vulnerability,” it underscores just how important BlackBerry thinks the automotive industry is to its future.
While few drivers are likely aware of it, QNX is already installed in 195 million vehicles on the road today. That’s almost 100 times the number of vehicles Tesla has out there, providing similar data points to learn from and giving Canada’s fallen tech giant a leg up in the self-driving space.
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While the company’s tech was world class, BlackBerry ultimately got left behind in the smartphone space it invented. 1:06
“It’s a big advantage for BlackBerry to already be in close to 200 million smart vehicles right now,” independent technology journalist Pascal Forget said in an interview with CBC News.
“They have much more data points, much more data that they can use to improve their systems compared to Tesla.”
Forget says he doubts that being just one component under the hood of every smart car on the road is enough to bring the company back to its glory days, but he says it could at least mean a new lease on life.
Remember these? Early BlackBerry devices, then made by a tiny Canadian company called Research In Motion, were among the first internet-connected smartphones ever made. (BlackBerry)
Bumpy road back
CEO John Chen has helmed BlackBerry for eight years now, and his mission since day one has been to do exactly what they’re doing now: pivot away from the lost battle of handsets and toward the software that powers the gadgets of tomorrow.
That path has been a painful one, with several rounds of major layoffs that hit hard in the technology hub of Kitchener and Waterloo, Ont.
“It was definitely a challenging time and there was a lot of worry locally,” says Mike Kirkup, the company’s former head of developer relations.
WATCH | How BlackBerry created the next generation of Canadian tech stars:
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The booming technology sector of Kitchener and Waterloo is full of former BlackBerry workers who started off on their own. 1:45
While BlackBerry was losing people, Kirkup says there was a concerted effort to retain a lot of the company’s talent in the region. Because even as it was dying in smartphones, the company was giving birth to the next generation of high-flying tech stars.
Many ex-BlackBerry people went on to build their own startups, while others helped take existing tech companies to the next level.
The data surveillance company Magnet Forensics, for instance, mostly consists of former BlackBerry employees in its executive team, including CEO Adam Belsher and chairman Jim Balsillie, who cofounded BlackBerry with Mike Lazaridis in the early 1990s when it was known as Research in Motion.
Magnet Forensics, which helps law enforcement agencies fight cybercrime, went public in May with an IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange that raised $115 million. Barely three months later, those shares have already tripled in value.
“I think that’s the understated or underrepresented story of the impact of what all those BlackBerry people are doing now: they’re scaling the next generation of companies with a level of experience and global knowledge that very few people would’ve had before,” Kirkup said.
Mike Kirkup, the company’s former head of developer relations, says former BlackBerry workers have created the next generation of tech startups in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. (Philippe De Montigny/CBC)
Meme stock treatment
While the name doesn’t have the cachet it once did, BlackBerry’s penchant for having world-leading tech was a factor in shares of the company going on a run earlier this year.
The stock price hit a nine-year high in January after news of the smart-car deal with Amazon landed, but a lot of the hype came from BlackBerry’s sudden status as a “meme stock” — a company retail investors pile money into, often confounding analysts who have a more intimate knowledge of the company’s financial prospects.
Robert Tétrault, portfolio manager at Canaccord Genuity in Winnipeg, says BlackBerry owes its run to the “GameStop phenomenon,” where online investor forums would co-ordinate to drive trades and pump up the value of certain stocks.
“It was all about sticking it to the institutions, sticking it to Wall Street. And pumping up a stock that they believed could grow.”
While that rally mostly fizzled, BlackBerry’s brief time as a meme stock speaks to how investors think the company has some valuable tech under the hood.
Regardless of that hype, turning high-tech driving software into actual profits will be where the rubber meets the road for the company.
“Redditors are focused on the next big thing and earnings are less important. But at the end of the day, a stock will be a reflection of its potential future earnings regardless of what happens online,” Tétrault said.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
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