As BlackBerry's CEO focuses on a turnaround, he says he'd sell BBM for $19 billion

As BlackBerry's CEO focuses on a turnaround, he says he'd sell BBM for $19 billion

Feb 25th 2014, 16:24, by Dante D'Orazio

There's some surprise news out of Barcelona today: BlackBerry CEO John Chen told CNBC that he'd be willing to sell the company's BBM chat service... for the right price. "If somebody comes to me with $19 billion I would definitely sell it," he told an interviewer on air. "I mean, I would recommend to the board to take it."
Maybe that isn't much of a surprise after all, considering BlackBerry has a market capitalization of roughly $5.5 billion. Of course, anyone comparing BBM to WhatsApp ought to have their head examined. BlackBerry's messaging client — unlike Facebook's latest acquisition — isn't a growth business, and it has less than 20 percent the active users of WhatsApp.
But Chen has other plans to turn Blackberry around...
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