MacDailyNews Take: $38.5 billion? How quaint.
Willis continues, “Specifically, there’s talk on trading desks that with RIM shares changing hands at a relatively modest 15 times its forecast earnings, and half the levels seen in 2008, big dogs such as Microsoft are sniffing around… There’s also nothing right now to suggest talks are actually taking place between RIM and a potential suitor. Steve Ballmer hasn’t been seen skulking about Waterloo, and even if he was, it wouldn’t mean much, as the Microsoft CEO is a frequent visitor to Canada’s top tech university, just down the road from RIM’s head office.”
Willis reports, “However, there is a great deal of noise.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Do it, Mr. Ballmer. Hasten RIM’s inevitable decline. We know you can do it!
If such a thing is ever to happen (and it’s really very unlikely), then it would be only logical to plaster WinMob on all future Blackberries, replacing whatever RIM OS the devices currently have.
If for some miraculous reason someone with half a brain existed in Redmond and was on such a day in charge of things, there’s a chance that the current RIM OS could be kept, absorbing its development team into WinMob team and transforming the two into some new ugly monster.
Whichever the road, MS would undoubtedly dilute the present value of RIM and Blackberry, both as brands, as well as a platform.
This would be really fun to watch!
Please, please let MS buy Rim.
We could watch MS totally destroy another company…
and have no clue they are doing it.
FAIL!
Oh! the thought of it!!! What a silly man Mr. Ballsillie has been pretending not to have heard of the iPhone when it was first debuted, He thought then that RIM could operate forever with business customers who were willing to pay his bloated prices for the benefit of push email. Now RIM is desperately trying to target its non customary market with offerings that are too little, too late and too poorly engineered as a rip off of the iPhone.
Not that Ballmer is smart enough to do it, but Palm’s WebOS is far better than RIMM’s Blackberry OS, and could be had for much, much less.
Maybe the Yankees can buy them. And then they can spend 10X as much on marketing as their competitors do and produce a great product once every ten years.
Just like Microsoft.
MS and RIM? Completely nuts… the result would be sheer chaos.
Something I didn’t predict before was how much the proliferation of new smartphone systems has benefited Apple. Android and to a lesser extent the Pre are busily attacking the BlackBerry and especially Windows Mobile from the other side. Now MS is so desperate that it’s actually conceivable they would make so enormous of a mistake as to purchase RIM.
Jobs has shown enough strategic chops that it might even be possible that this was all planned. As in, “hey Google, why don’t we split up, compete and attack the enemy from multiple directions?” It’s certainly worked out that way.
As a Canadian…I wouldn’t wish such a despicable fate on Ballsillie. With Mediocresoft involved it could only get worse…MUCH!
Well, Microsoft has already purchased Danger, fired or alienated many of its best employees, and destroyed its once-popular Sidekick product. What do they have to show for their purchase now, aside from a huge SLA payments to T-Mobile after nuking the Sidekick servers and creating an unmitigated disaster? Whatever may or may not come out of their “Pink” project doesn’t seem to have been worth all of that.
I can’t see Microsoft being willing to throw around even more money in an area where they’ve been absorbing a serious level of hurt. Just for once, I’d love it if Microsoft could accept the fact that they can’t be the kings of everything, and simply bow out of the smartphone OS arena. Could they just for once play nicely with others? …yeah, right, not as long as Ballmer’s still there. And as long as the monopoly money keeps flowing in from their cash cows, I suppose they’ll continue spending it wastefully…
With the current level of corporate dysfunction going on within Microsoft, any takeover of RIM (or Palm, or whoever they eventually decide to assimilate into the collective) would almost certainly result in the same level of carnage we’ve seen from their mishandling of Danger.
every nine years.
Willis reports, “However, there is a great deal of noise.”
There’s the easy answer about RIM:
“It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
My, sounds like someone who has the author’s ear is trying to get a rise out of RIMs stock before they unload.
Does anyone remember the incessant stories about how Apple was ripe for a takeover because they were going down for the last time, again?
national champion with a $38.5-billion market cap can be considered vulnerable to a takeover,”
national, not international?
It doesn’t make any sense for Microsoft to acquire RIM. Microsoft and their valued partners have a great thing going with Windows Mobile. The hype surrounding Windows Mobile 6.5 has the wind at their sails whereas a usable version of Android is years away and MAC’s beleaguered I-Phone is simply a niche product. Windows Mobile is all the IT guys at work talk about when it comes to smartphones.
Your potential. Our passion.™
They will fit right in at Microshaft
all the crappy conglomerates can all go down hill together
Synergies! Can you feel the vibe?
I can see it now: Danger Sidekick disaster II: The sequel
Anything to stop those horrendous Blackberry TV commercials. Please!
Ballmer has to do something. Apple generated about $12B in iPhone sales last year, while MS generated about $250M in WinMo sales. That’s embarassing and Ballmer needs to let some heads roll. He’ll wait until WinMo7 is out and fails before buying something out of desperation.
What I’d like to know is what Steve Ballmer is doing being a “frequent visitor to Canada’s top tech university”.
Not only intent on destroying Microsoft, he also has to destroy the future of the next generation of Canadian IT students too?
Or is it the “how NOT to do it class”?
@KenC
He’ll wait until WinMo7 is out and fails before buying something out of desperation.
Really? ’cause I would have thought he would scarf RIM up in the Eleventh Hour to save face, because the WinMo team can’t deliver on the hype, nor can they figure out how to shrink camcorders to fit under the glass of a hand-held device.
“national, not international?”
forget it, its a bullshit fluff piece.
how the hell are they champions anyway?
@Macaday
What I’d like to know is what Steve Ballmer is doing being a “frequent visitor to Canada’s top tech university
He’s recruiting potential RIM employees to augment his mobile “strategy” using H-1B Visas.
@ G4Dualie
national, not international?
This was from The Globe and Mail, from Toronto. That is Canada’s leading newspaper, comparable in status to the NY Times or Washington Post. So yes, “national”.
BTW, CDN $38.5 billion = US $35.7 billion, so RIM is worth less than it might otherwise appear.
Best thing that could happen if MS buys RIM is that the RIM folks takeover the WinCE team – like Pixar took over Disney Animation.
@ mike,
“how the hell are they champions anyway?”
They are the only tech giant in Canada left standing. They lead smart phone sales in North America. There is no way the Canadian Government will allow the sale of RIM to an American corporation.
If Microsoft could find some Canadian deep pockets to hold 51% of RIM, Microsoft could buy 49% and drag everyone into the poorhouse with them.
I wish Microsoft good luck with the purchase, as long as no Canadian Government money is involved. I pay too much taxes as it is.
Gabriel, I don’t believe Microsoft can survive if they bow out of the smartphone arena completely. Mobile computing is becoming core to the overall computing experience and many emerging markets are growing up with their phones providing the functions that have been traditionally provided by computers running Microsoft software.
Mobile is already threatening to become Microsoft’s Tatooine — a breeding ground for changes in the computing industry that would destroy the empire. If they do not win a majority in mobile they are doomed.
“I can’t see Microsoft being willing to throw around even more money in an area where they’ve been absorbing a serious level of hurt. Just for once, I’d love it if Microsoft could accept the fact that they can’t be the kings of everything, and simply bow out of the smartphone OS arena. Could they just for once play nicely with others? …yeah, right, not as long as Ballmer’s still there. And as long as the monopoly money keeps flowing in from their cash cows, I suppose they’ll continue spending it wastefully…”
The only thing MSFT remains king of, desktop computing, is going away. The future, once again accurately forecasted by Apple, is mobile computing.
The iPhone is the advance element that is changing everyone’s attitude/perception about when and where they can access everything they want.
Apple is positioning itself, with hardware, software and services, to be our mobile content provider.
Microsoft HAS to succeed in mobility technology to survive, period. Otherwise, as the enterprise returns to UNIX , they are nothing more than a footnote in history.