Samsung Electronics Co Ltd recently approached BlackBerry Ltd about buying the company for as much as $7.5 billion, looking to gain access to its patent portfolio, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents seen by Reuters.
South Korea’s Samsung proposed an initial price range of $13.35 to $15.49 per share, which represents a premium of 38 percent to 60 percent over BlackBerry’s current trading price, the source said.
Executives from the two companies, which are working with advisers, met last week to discuss a potential transaction, the source said, asking not to be identified because the conversations are private.
Big news, if true.
Please don’t kill it.
Would you prefer Apple or MS buying them? Are Samsung engaged in common patent aggression like the former? If they aren’t, it can be considered like utilizing old nuclear weapons, which is better than giving them over to some hostile thug.
Edited 2015-01-14 23:54 UTC
I think that it will die a horrible dead. Samsung cannot even support his own Tizen properly…
Edited 2015-01-15 00:32 UTC
As a recent BlackBerry convert, meaning I had never used a BBRY device before last year, the only word that comes to mind is….fuck.
What if SONY decides to steps in as well, now its all over the news by now…like DollarTree was asking price to buyout FamilyDollar and then Dollar General steps in unexpected with a higher offer…
this could happen with this scenario, if SONY steps in for asking a higher price to buyout blackberry because they are switching to blackberry and they will be disappointed of paying royal fees to Samsung if they win…
Sony has a market cap of less than 24 billion. Samsung Electronics has a market cap of more than 160 billion. There is no way Sony wins a bidding war that’s already (rumored) to start at 7.5 billion… no matter how much personal wishful thinking you put into it.
Edited 2015-01-15 02:17 UTC
Sony could achieve it with share exchange or buybacks. They wouldn’t need to have 7.5b in cash in the bank. Its not unheard of for a company to buy another with a bigger cap.
I’m not suggesting that Sony couldn’t buy a large company, I’m stating they can’t win a bidding war with Samsung.
Not gonna happen.
Sony is currently having large losses over the smartphone division:
http://www.cnet.com/news/sony-posts-1-2-billion-loss-as-mobile-busi…
At this point, it is probably more likely that Sony Mobile Communications is on the market soon as well.
IF that report is correct, then that would because the company’s smart phone is too expensive for the consumer market to buy.
The main assets of blackberry are their software offerings in the form BBM and BES. Considering samsung have just dropped their own BBM alternative as they couldn’t any traction, I’d be surprised if they decided to flog that horse again!
In terms of patents, samsung have plenty and are already fighting on all fronts. Maybe there is a patent here which they can avoid the MS tax with. Make that 7b back after just a few years.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102276894
End of story but BB stock is still up 30% today.
People looking at a companies assets rather than perception can sometimes open eyes
And finally MeeGo comes back with a whole set of awesome.
So as far as phone OSs I’ve used pretty extensively.. I’ve had the Motorola RAZR2, hacked, it had Linux on it, but was not really what most would refer to as a ‘smart phone’ today. Then I had a Cliq for a short time, hated android, thought 1.6 was a piece of crap. Then I got my Nokia N900. Maemo 5 was awesome, though they probably should have tweaked the priority of the phone portion a bit. I still love this phone.
Then I went onto the N9. Fantastically designed… screw Elop.
Then I got my Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and by the time I got it, 4.4.2 update was available, so I didn’t really play with the previous release. Wow, I hate this phone, it seems I’m always trying to make it ‘feel’ right. I don’t mean the physical largeness of it (though that’s occasionally an issue, like last night I was reading an ebook and it slipped a bit out of my hand and hit me in the eye…
But Android just feels so rough around the edges, or overly bloated by crap. Mostly if you install ANY sort of app, it likes to just be there in the background, even if you haven’t used it in 3 weeks…
Then I got a Q10 from work. While I wish I’d had the Z10 for the larger screen (Give me a slider keyboard or no keyboard at all!) the OS was phenomenal. I could definitely see some of the awesome MeeGo influences in it. It is a great operating system, and I’d consider getting a passport.
I REALLY want a Jolla phone, if they’d release one that supported 4G in USA, I’d get one in a heartbeat.
This will be sad if Samsung just buys BB for their patents. It’ll be like when HP bought Palm and did nothing with WebOS…
Anyone who has seen the LG/Audi WebOS watch will see how awesome it looks… and everyone I talked to about WebOS thought it was fantastic as well.
Last thought…. seriously, why does the crappiest technology always seem to win out?
Deproofed: http://crackberry.com/blackberry-has-reportedly-declined-number-rec…