{"id":56917,"date":"2014-05-05T17:53:10","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T15:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=56917"},"modified":"2014-05-05T17:53:10","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T15:53:10","slug":"blackberry-offloads-properties-for-278-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/56917\/blackberry-offloads-properties-for-278-million\/","title":{"rendered":"BlackBerry offloads properties for $278 million"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Smartphone maker BlackBerry announced Monday the sale of most of its Canadian properties to San Francisco-based real estate investment firm Spear Street, for Can$305 million (US$278 million).<\/p>\n<p>The deal includes more than three million square feet of office space as well as vacant lands.<\/p>\n<p>BlackBerry said in a statement it will lease back a portion of the space.<\/p>\n<p>The real estate selloff is part of BlackBerry&#8217;s turnaround plan, refocusing on its core software and services business after a dismal few years.<\/p>\n<p>BlackBerry helped create a culture of mobile users glued to smartphones, but lost its luster as many moved to iPhones or devices using Google&#8217;s Android software.<\/p>\n<p>After posting record losses last year, the company brought in new management and outsourced its handset production to Taiwan-based Foxconn.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on BlackBerry<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"BlackBerry could exit handset business\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/55546\/blackberry-could-exit-handset-business\/\"><strong>BlackBerry could exit handset business<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"BlackBerry hit with $423 million loss\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/55008\/blackberry-hit-with-423-million-loss\/\"><strong>BlackBerry hit with $423 million loss<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BlackBerry announced Monday the sale of most of its Canadian properties to San Francisco-based real estate investment firm Spear Street, for US$278 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[25,161,1668,53,7865],"class_list":["post-56917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-active","tag-blackberry","tag-foxconn","tag-google","tag-spear-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56919,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56917\/revisions\/56919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}