Wall Street is reporting that the $4.7B buyout deal with Fairfax Financial Holdings has been replaced with a plan to issue $1B in convertible debt. The Wall Street Journal reports on that here. So the BlackBerry saga continues, and the SMB Nation IT Pros are starting to get restless. Here is my advice on this matter:
First of all, there’s a special place in my heart for BlackBerry, so don’t look for me to pile it on. Essentially, your BlackBerry device will work well into the future. At SMB Nation, we have a handful of BlackBerry devices we use daily and we fully anticipate using these for our present and future business needs. I liken it to this: a “cream puff” 1960s automobile that is your pride and joy, long discontinued, and still happily runs. So I want to instill a lack of fear in my analysis. Granted – you will likely need to plan for a migration away from BlackBerry, all things being equal, but perhaps my “step wise” contribution is to “Keep Calm and Carry On.” I believe you could easily use up to 24-months to plan and execute the next phase of your mobility strategy.
In that time there are potentially serious disruptions including: how will the Nokia/Microsoft deal play out with the Windows 8.1 experience extending across all devices? And who will ultimately acquire BlackBerry? It’s one of those strange times in technology where we don’t know what we don’t know.
