A couple of weeks ago, the media was abuzz with the news of BlackBerry’s $4.7 billion sale to Fairfax Financial. As it turns out, BlackBerry’s board isn’t quite satisfied with the deal yet, and as per Reuters are in talks with multiple other companies including Cisco, Google, and Samsung.
There aren’t many details regarding what BlackBerry are pitching to these companies. If I have to make a guess, I believe they would prefer a Nokia-style acquisition where one of the manufacturers pick up their smartphone business while BlackBerry keep hold of their other service like E-mail and BBM. If that were to be the case, a question arises regarding patents. In the Microsoft-Nokia deal, Nokia kept their patents with Microsoft getting a long-term license. In this case, I would presume the patents are up for sale with Blackberry getting a license instead, considering someone like Samsung might be interested in potentially using them aggressively against Apple or Microsoft if the need arises.
On the whole, though, I’m just not sure why anyone would pick up BlackBerry’s smartphone business particularly after their latest quarterly numbers, and several patent-focused acquisitions proving costly mistakes by various Open Handset Alliance members, will anyone want to take the risk?
If I were any one of these companies (barring Cisco, who might be interested in the services side of things) I would stay away. What do you guys think, should any Android OEM look to acquire BlackBerry?
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