One of the most quintessential devices towards the early 2000s was the BlackBerry. Carried by all business executives and government officials. The fall from grace was not unexpected given the ever changing winds that is the mobile consumer market (even though this was closer to enterprise tech at the beginning).

Did you know it still exists?

While there was an attempt to be acquired, over 10 years ago, none of it succeeded. These days, their focused more on cybersecurity and re-licensing their patents with a smaller IoT focus.

Here’s a follow-up question, how about when the service officially shut down?

It is Christmas time in 2021 and BlackBerry posted a reminder on their support site to remind their customers that their service will be shutting down after the New Year’s holiday of January 4, 2022. That is the day the ceased being a mobile device provider.

Picture yourself about 10 years looking at acquiring a company, and they were still dependent upon Blackberry for their communications. What would have been your first reaction? I’m willing to bet this wouldn’t be enough to tank the deal, but you can see the risk involved. In this case, it’d be a small one that you could account for during the integration effort.

What if it was the you about 5 years ago instead? For context: BlackBerry did not announce they were going to shutdown their network until Sept 9, 2020.

While there is this push towards modernizing legacy systems, sometimes, the answers aren’t as clear cut. It could be a critical piece of communication, a critical piece for the product, or a critical piece of infrastructure.

How would the above change things for you?

How do you think this changes the company being acquired?