Blackberry Abandons Plan to Sell Company

Once-dominant smartphone manufacturer Blackberry has abandoned plans to sell itself.

The Canadian technology firm said in August it was selling the company to Fairfax Financial Holdings for $4.7 billion, but Fairfax had trouble raising enough money to complete the deal.



Instead, Blackberry said Monday that it would raise $1 billion from investors, with one-quarter of the money coming from Fairfax. In addition, Blackberry said it is replacing its chief executive, Thorsten Heins, and naming the former head of a database software company, John Chen, as its interim leader.



Blackberry was a smartphone pioneer, once controlling more than half of the U.S. market. But now it has fallen to a very small worldwide share, 1 percent in the July-to-September period.

Devices that run Google's Android software now account for more than 81 percent of smartphones sold across the globe, with more than 200 million smartphones shipped in the third quarter. Apple had a 13 percent share and Microsoft 4 percent.