BlackBerry (Nasdaq: BBRY), facing mounting losses and dwindling buyout prospects, is slashing its workforce and product line and refocusing on the market that first brought it success: corporate customers.

The Canada-based company said last week that it’s cutting 4,500 jobs and taking a writedown of as much as $960 million for unsold inventory of its Z10 phone — a touch- screen device unveiled in January as its answer to the iPhone.

BlackBerry maintains a research and development operation in the Triangle.

Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins had bet the Z10 would become BlackBerry’s new flagship, restoring cachet and prosperity to the one-time smartphone leader. Instead, the model fizzled with consumers and contributed to the company’s weakest quarterly sales in six years.

Attempts to find an acquirer have been fruitless so far. Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., BlackBerry’s largest shareholder, has contacted private-equity firms in a bid to line up a buyer, without avail, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. With no immediate prospects of a white knight acquiring BlackBerry, the company has no choice but to zero in on business customers and try to shrink its way to profitability, says Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners LP in New York.

At one time, rumors circulated that Lenovo, which operates its executive headquarters in Morrisville, was interested in acquiring BlackBerry, which until recently was known as Research In Motion. The name change to BlackBerry was part of an effort to reignite the company’s flagging business. 

“It’s the end of an era: BlackBerry as we knew it is over,” said Gillis, who recommends selling BlackBerry’s stock. “They’re refocusing on a much smaller niche enterprise-focused company and that’s a reasonable strategy for them.”

Shares Drop

The shares declined 7.6 percent to the equivalent of $8.13 Monday morning in Frankfurt, Germany. They tumbled 17 percent on Sept. 20, the day of the announcement, in New York trading, where the stock has fallen 94 percent from its 2008 high.

BlackBerry, credited with inventing the first smartphones more than a decade ago, once sold products that were so popular and addictive they were known as CrackBerrys. In recent years, the company failed to keep pace with Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., which offered better Web browsing and a wider range of applications. BlackBerry’s share of the global smartphone market shrank to 2.9 percent in the second quarter from 4.9 percent a year earlier, according to IDC. It has fallen to fourth place behind Google Inc.’s Android, Apple’s iOS and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone platform.

Still, the company continues to unveil new products based on its revamped BB10 operating system, including a model last week that will be the largest touch-screen BlackBerry ever. It also opened up its BlackBerry Messenger instant-messaging service to Android and iPhone users over the weekend — though that effort also hit a snag. The rollout was suspended yesterday because of technical difficulties.

Touch Screens

The Z10 was an attempt to show that BlackBerry could compete in the touch-screen arena. The company is best known for its physical keyboards, which bankers and lawyers have prized for their ability to crank out e-mails. With its lackluster sales, the Z10 failed to demonstrate that BlackBerry can challenge the broader market for touch-screen smartphones.

While BlackBerry isn’t abandoning touch screens, it will pare its product line from six models to four and only target corporate and professional customers, the company said last week. Still, even formerly loyal business customers are wavering. Morgan Stanley, for instance, is holding off on upgrading its employees to BB10 because of concerns that the Canadian company may not back its platform long-term, according to two people with knowledge of the bank’s plans.

Private Equity?

An acquisition of BlackBerry could help the product live on, though that prospect also may be dim. While the company reiterated last week that it’s open to a potential buyout, the latest results may have made it that much harder to find a suitor, said Michael Genovese, an analyst at MKM Partners in Greenwich, Connecticut. BlackBerry’s main benefit may be the services revenue it extracts from existing users, he said.

“I don’t think anyone wants these handsets. I don’t think anyone even wants this software,” said Genovese, who rates BlackBerry a sell. “The only kind of company I can see buying them is private equity and private equity will say, ‘We can pay X for BlackBerry just to milk that services-revenue stream.’”

As of June, BlackBerry had 72 million subscribers — down from 76 million in the previous three months. The company didn’t give a figure for the most recent quarter.

JPMorgan and RBC Capital Markets spent close to a year quietly canvassing potential BlackBerry acquirers without success, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.

Shareholder’s Effort

When BlackBerry formed a board committee last month to explore a possible sale, Fairfax CEO Prem Watsa stepped down as a director. That allowed the Toronto businessman to begin discussing a local bid for the smartphone maker without potential conflicts of interest. Fairfax held a 9.9 percent stake in BlackBerry as of June 30.

Fairfax President Paul Rivett, reached after BlackBerry’s Sept. 20 results, declined to comment on whether the company is leading a buyout of BlackBerry.

The company still has significant assets on its books and no debt. It had $2.6 billion in cash and equivalents at the end of last quarter, down from $3.1 billion three months earlier. Its patent portfolio and secure e-mail network may be worth at least $1 billion apiece, estimates Tim Long, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

If the company is bought whole, the buyer would likely shut down the hardware business, given its downward spiral, according to Michael Walkley, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity Inc. BMO’s Long, who rates BlackBerry a hold, has estimated the cost of closing that business at about $800 million, making it a liability rather than an asset.

Take-Under Bid?

If it does entice a buyer, BlackBerry may have to cut its losses and settle for a so-called take-under bid, where the per- share price is below the value of the stock.

“You face the question of: ‘Do I continue to operate this business with deteriorating fundamentals and perhaps burn cash flow, which ultimately will end up badly?’” said Brian Huen, managing partner at Red Sky Capital Management in Toronto. His firm, which manages about C$220 million ($214 million) in assets, dumped its small remaining holdings in BlackBerry after last week’s surprise announcement.

Brian Blair, an analyst at Wedge Partners in New York, agrees there is some value in BlackBerry’s patent portfolio and its dwindling legacy of subscribers — but the company will fetch $7 or $8 a share at best, less than the stock’s current value.

“Sales have hit a wall and this is only going to get worse,” he said.