Skip straight to the secret plan of Blackberry

Robin Chan, who put together the secret plan for a new Android-based Blackberry.

The fate of BlackBerry hangs in the balance. It has a deal on paper to take itself private via Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings for $4.7 billion. But the company is still shopping itself in case there is a sweeter rescue bid out there. Last week, BlackBerry met with Facebook. We'd be surprised if Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was tempted into owning his own ailing phone company, though.


The fact that BlackBerry today can only attract $4.7 billion from potential buyers puts some new perspective on a secret plan put together last year by tech venture capital investor Robin Chan.
He wanted to raise $6 billion from backers, approach the board of directors with a hostile bid to replace the management, "fork" its operating system, and turn BlackBerry into the Android of enterprise. Chan, who has funded Twitter, Square, and Foursquare among others, called his plan a "coup d'etat" that would have rescued BlackBerry. But he didn't get enough backing and the plan came to nothing.
The plan was codenamed "BBX." It is outlined in a PowerPoint deck on the following pages. You can read more about it on The Verge.