No More BlackBerry Phones in T-Mobile Stores
In yet another confirmation of the impending darker days ahead for the once top Canadian tech firm BlackBerry, T-Mobile U.S. said over the weekend that it would no longer have BlackBerry smartphones in its stores nor air ads for its slow selling devices such as the Z10.
However, T-Mobile is not completely ditching the BlackBerry. Instead the fourth largest wireless service provider in the U.S. will just instead ship the devices directly to customers who will order the phones made by the Canadian firm.
T-Mobile Executive Vice President for Corporate Services David Carey explained that keeping a stock of BlackBerry phones in its retail distribution system was inefficient because of low demand for the device, even as BlackBerry divulged plans to no longer market their products to consumers.
He pointed out that BlackBerry smartphones are mostly preferred by businesses which do not make purchasing decisions in stores.
BlackBerry, over the weekend, confirmed its $965 million quarterly loss due to a 49 per cent revenue drop caused by weak sales of its smartphones despite the release in the earlier of the year of new models.
Despite the weak financial position of BlackBerry caused by the growing unpopularity of its phone, analysts said that lack of obvious bombshells could place at risk the proposed buyout of the company.
The Waterloo-based firm is schedule to provide more details of its earnings this week through regulatory filings, which would be the main source of information for analysts after BlackBerry cancelled a conference call on Wednesday.
The cancellation of the conference call was preceded by a $4.7-billion cash takeover and privatisation offer from Fairfax Financial on Monday. Fairfax is the largest shareholder in the downward-spiralling tech firm. It is based in Toronto and engaged in insurance.
But Fairfax's offer, amounting to $9 per share, depends on certain conditions such as a due diligence on the company's book and securing of financing to serve as backstop for the purchase price.
The bulk of BlackBerry's $965 million losses came from the writedown of unsold Z10 touchscreen mobile units, leading to the $1.84 per diluted share operating loss three months that ended Aug 31.