Plenty of rumors hit the Web every single day and the mobile industry has not been one without rumors. Research in Motion has been on the decline for about one year and the company has made some drastic calls after market share started falling amid competition from Apple and Android powered devices. Today, rumors are circulating that RIM could be selling part or all of itself to Samsung. Information from sources close to the deal say that Samsung is in the lead as the buyer for the Blackberry handset maker, so that suggests there might be more interest from other companies.
RIM has been talking with other companies about licensing deals for its software, but other sources say that RIM is looking for a straight up sale instead. Statements from the Co-CEO of Research in Motion certainly suggest that more than one company is interested in the deal, but also said the company is “going hard after Samsung”. The price of the reported sale of the Blackberry handset has been rumored to be around the $12-$15 billion dollar mark, but experts say the company only has a market capitalization of $8.5 billion so we’ll see if that plays a part in the sale.
Blackberry might not have gained market share in the last year, but that doesn’t mean the company doesn’t have something another company would want. Samsung could be looking at patents; Blackberry’s messaging software or email programs as well. News of the possible sale actually made RIM’s stock climb up to over $17 per share, which is pretty good since the stock fell almost 75 percent just last year. If Samsung were to win the chance to purchase RIM, they would have access to another operating system that would be different from Apple and help them stay ahead in the competition.
Tavis McCourt, an analyst from Morgan Keegan, said “This has been speculated before, and it does have logic to it in the sense that Samsung has no viable high-end smartphone operating system, and increasingly reselling Android or Windows Phone is being viewed as a commodity business.” New phones came from Blackberry last year, but they failed to gain the customer attention they had hoped calling for experts to say the company should split up, find a buyer or replace management. In the last 6 months, the company’s stock has jumped 5 percent or more 10 times as talks surfaced about a possible buyout.
