“Research in Motion’s shares rose 10 per cent on the Nasdaq on Wednesday amid a fresh round of reports that potential acquirers, including Amazon, had expressed interest in buying the struggling Canadian maker of BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablet computers,” Paul Taylor reports for The Financial Times. “Although the talks took place earlier this year and were rebuffed by RIM, news of the takeover interest nevertheless saw the shares gain $1.25 to $13.77. RIM’s senior management and board appear to have ruled out a sale, at least for the moment.”
Taylor reports, “HTC and Samsung, which both make smartphones running Google’s rival Android operating system, have also been mentioned as potential bidders, although, as with Amazon, their primary interest could be RIM’s extensive patent portfolio, which they could use to defend patent suits from rivals. Analysts note that Google’s pending acquisition of Motorola Mobility was driven, in large part, by Google’s need to strengthen the intellectual property supporting Android in the face of an escalating patent war with Apple and others.”
“RIM’s co-chief executives, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who together hold about 11 per cent of RIM’s equity, have made clear they plan to lead the turnround effort and believe RIM can survive as an independent company,” Taylor reports. “Their willingness to consider an offer is critical, and they have not shown evidence of that to date, said Rod Hall, a JPMorgan analyst.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Lazaridis and Balsillie are two fools inside a one-trick pony suit. Whatever they say is meaningless babble. And, describing RIM as “maker of PlayBook tablet computers” is just plain cruel; Tayler’s kick in the face to RIM as it lies sprawled in the gutter. It’s like describing the now-defunct Palm Inc. as the “maker of the Foleo.”
Amazon would be the perfect place for the RIM dinosaur to curl up and die.
I’d *love* to see Amazon or Samdung waste their dough on RIM.
nobody is going to touch rim its too crappy
all the short sellers will be happy doubling their money on it
Apple should buy RIM. The value to Apple is not the BlackBerry or PlayBook but BES. The RIM secure enterprise servers with the iPhone would destroy all other phones for business use.
RIM’s FLAN network would also be useful, if only to replicate in AAPL’s SIRI infrastructure.
GEEZ, Amazon the maker of the Kindle Fire wanted to buy Beleaguered the maker of the PlayBook; and the PlayBook maker said NO !?! It doesn’t get any funnier than this, ROFLMFAO 🙂
I don’t understand Wall Street. Months old news of a rebuffed purchase attempt send the stock up? I would actually expect smart stockholders to sell on this news. Rim is dying. They need a significant change at the top. A sale might actually be the catalyst for this.
If nothing else, a buyout last summer would have allowed the stockholders to get out while there was still some value. When the end does come there are going to be lawsuits over the mismanagemnt that didn’t even considered selling the company when they could have gotten a decent price.
They want RIM for its patents? jus like Google get Motorola’s patents for the Razzor, the camshelf phone, the vider and many, many more devices that ARE NO LONGER IN USE?
Looks at the iphone, you can sync and connect with exchange with minimal effort, no additional licenses require, no especial configuration, no additional servers, info does not goes away up to Canada and goes back to your device… Why would anyone will want to buy a company for a bunch of antique patents no longer in use besides Google?
Duh! There are parts of Canada that are south of parts of the USA (and I’m not referring to Alaska). Besides, electronic data does not have to clear customs!
I am Canadian. My summer home on Lake Erie is further south than the California – Oregon Border. Detroit, Michigan is north of our summer home.
RIM’s patents are useful and worth money only if you want to resurrect a 65 million year old dinosaur.
Maybe Apple could kick them a few billion in order to get rights to all their patents. That would protect Apple in case RIM gets sold to a hostile third party.
Lazaridis and Balsillie are two fools inside a one-trick pony suit.
I’m betting that Balsillie is is the south bound end of that north bound costume.
I was going to say they both always fought to see who got to play the horse’s ass.
Apple can easily afford to buy them and use the network and dump the crappy hardware.
OR they could just wait until they self-destruct by the Spring, then pick up whatever patents they have…
“RIM’s co-chief executives, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who together hold about 11 per cent of RIM’s equity, have made clear they plan to lead the turnround effort”. By turnaround do they mean ‘swirl around’, as in swirl around the bowl on their way down the drain?
Thanks MDN! I was under the impression that ‘RIM’ sold spectacles to short sighted executives of go nowhere companies.
“Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who together hold about 11 per cent of RIM’s equity…”
Lazaridis and Balsillie had better have money stashed somewhere else because the Titanic is a-goin’ down.