Recently in the news, we’ve been hearing a lot about Blackberry and its drastic decline in the smartphone industry. We see 4500 jobs being cut, almost $1 billion quarterly losses and the sharp fall stock value and we see that Blackberry is certainly in distress. Despite this, many say that selling Blackberry’s vast portfolio of patents and intellectual property could be the key to making up for losses and possibly helping them to go private.
Although the patents are worth a great deal of money (billions of dollars), investors need to be careful about overestimating how much these patents will garner. Remember that much of Blackberry’s technology was popular when Blackberry itself was popular. In other words, what worked for Blackberry might not work for another company. It’s clear that smartphone design and technology is constantly changing. This means that patents on features such as the keyboard (Blackberry’s bread and butter) might be irrelevant given the trend towards touch screens.
Blackberry is at a point where it can either redefine itself or cease to meaningfully exist. Certainly, selling its patents will help the recovery process. We just need to be aware of how much their intellectual property is really worth.
Blackberry’s Stock Chart: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=BBRY+Interactive#symbol=bbry;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;