for more on their plans, i am joined by hugo miller. to the seacrest situation in a moment. there was another announcement that black area made today. they have hired a former htc executive to run their business. what is the goal therefore the device business at this point, and for this personnel change? hired a former executive at sony ericsson and htc. do not know if we should point out that both of those companies have fallen on hard times compared to where they were five years ago, but he has been hired to potentially oversee the device business. the question is -- are they still in the device game? they signed a large deal with fox, last month. essentially what he is going to be doing is managing that change over. foxconn is going to start not just reducing, but increasingly doing the design and marketing of these phones. the role may not be a permanent role, but he is there to act as a liaison to oversee the device strategy, even if, odd as it sounds, more and more of the device production and oversight is moving over. >> speaking

hugo miller joins us from toronto. even the fabulous ms. alicia keys could not save blackberry.that the takeaway? >> exactly. the wording was clear. it was not clear anyone was firing anyone. it was merely described as the end of a one-year collaboration. ceo,akeaway is the new john chen, this is not in his game plan. froms decided that phones a consumer perspective are not part of his future. he has outsourced the entire production and design of the consumer-oriented phones to foxconn in a deal that was announced last week. this will be about going back to lawyers, bankers, civil servants, and few of them have probably even heard of alicia keys. >> what? nobody has heard of alicia keys in canada? what is going on? she was brought on before the launch of the blackberry 10. this was all-in for blackberry, with a new product they hoped would rescue the brand and she was part of that. back 12f you rewind months, things were looking good. people were saying this would put blackberry back in the game. alicia keys stepped on the stage in manhattan just under a year ago and people thou

. >> hugo miller, thank you so miller will be talking to the ceo of blackberry. interviewing you that tomorrow. we will be back on the markets in 30 minutes. "money moves" is next. >> welcome to "money moves," where we focus on alternative assets. i'm deirdre bolton. we show you what is going on in private equity, real estate, and more. today, sprint main merge -- still a possibility with t- mobile. if that happens, we will tell you what that means for verizon and at&t. carlisle has hired the former sec chairman to do tech and media deals. we will show you what he could contribute to carlyle's bottom line. greylockd manager from here.ether -- capital is first though, t-mobile is buying airways from verizon. cristina alesci is with us. we know that t-mobile paying close to $2.5 billion in cash. morethis make t-mobile a attractive takeover target? >> absolutely, and it makes t- mobile a better company, right? they have been talking about the need to go out and acquire what they call low band spectrum. this is spectrum that can travel far, even through thick office

hugo miller has details from our toronto euro. why now?here is a small matter of about 10,000 jobs that have been cut in recent years. they are setting a lot of empty real estate. secondly, like barry needs cash. they've got a lot out it only helps to reassure investors to say we did not burn through 500 million dollars, we added it to our cash reserves. it's a combination of those things. that itmply the fact makes the company -- it gives them more flexibility because even though it is selling its assets, it is leasing them back which allows them to do deals to add leases to revisit -- to reduce cost more efficiently. >> given some flexibility and the new -- john chen, ceo, is making some believers out of people who have been critical of the company? >> he is charming with skeptics. the short-sellers are perhaps in retreat. the shortselling by dems the lowest in over one year. sellere prominent short came out saying if you are a short seller and are willing to try to short a well-financed company focused on enterprise software, you are nu

hugo miller, thank you so much. ofll ahead, is the revival the surface tablet happening?urvey shows that usage spikes after christmas. we will give you the details. ♪ >> comeback. phone,streaming on your tablet, and bloomberg.com. the year has started off on a positive note for microsoft surface tablet. a new report says that the share of tablet web traffic generated ice surfaces spiked over the holidays. they tracked the devices on ads from networks that appear before and after christmas. here to discuss the report is matt from the mobile group. a lot of people wanted to write the surface off. are you saying it has a chance of it coming a real established player in the tablet market? >> according to our stats, we believe so. with a reduction in price at the major retailers, we saw three percent increase in surface traffic from six percent of the tablet non-ipad traffic. the price reduction really has allowed the price to gain traction. >> one of the things i found shocking about your report is morethe traffic spiked than on the google nexus? >> that is correct. that is o

for more on this, we are joined by hugo miller joining us in toronto.he price tagged in your estimation? >> we are trying to get an actual sense of this. is butt know what this it is about 3 million square feet. blackberry says they're getting rid of more than three feet. guess that this will be many hundreds of millions. it would be perhaps more than a billion. to our add this coverage. but the stock is rising on this news and after hours. what kind of confidence is it in the ceo? voteis will be yet another of confidence. the stocks are up. what he has done since he took over is talking to investors and much plainer language, not sugar coating the that blackberry has. he has a plain speaking with a series of concrete steps. that is what investors wanted. they finally want someone that can start to make real change and bring in people that they have confidence in. >> the u.s. defense department named the company as its primary device that will be used on the new network. we are talking 80,000 blackberries, put this into perspective. >> there was little