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Microsoft, Nokia, and Amazon Contemplated RIM Takeover
CSHARP123 writes "WSJ's anonymous sources indicates that MS and Nokia casually considered bidding on Research in Motion Ltd. The outcome of the talks are not clear. The Journal suggests that this wasn't anything more than a simple idea that came up at one of the regular meetings between senior executives from all three companies — perhaps it could have even been just a casual talk — but one wonders how Microsoft and Nokia executives think there is profit to be made by this take over. Maybe RIM provides a good backdoor entry for MS into the enterprise space for its Windows Phone 7? Recently, Amazon was also considering bidding on RIM. It is interesting to see who will gobble up RIM."
So all your calls would take twice as long as estimated to get there and be broken up when they do?
To consider, to look, to evaluate.. and ultimately not to.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A brief read of the news recently makes it clear that the patent situation is completely out of control.
The hope was that Google buying Motorola would create enough balance between the portfolio's of Google, MS, and Apple that it would be in all of their interests to return to some form of truce.
RIM has an enormous stockpile of patents - if MS gets them, all bets are off.
How sad that RIM has basically backed themselves into the corner. They used to have a rock solid product and reputation in the business world for communications devices, enterprise encrypted emails... now flop after flop and stiff competition and suddenly they are on their death bed. Sad, but more pathetic than anything.
Slightly used, may be missing a few lifeboats but otherwise in decent condition.
Free iceberg included!
Wow, Nokia's stock is down like 50% since they decided to go with windows.
They may throw away the BB OS and we'll have less choice.
I would rather BB exist by themselves. Look what happened to Maemo, MeeGo, WebOS, Palm and all these other promising designs. It's bad for us consumers if BB disappears.
In the UK BBs are good because of the cheap monthly contracts compared to other phones. I think they've reversed the stereotype of being business-only and managed to be attractive to consumers.
Has anyone noticed the ridiculous volume of negative RIM/BB articles recently? It's like some large interests want to kill the popularity of BB. The date of the downtime of BBM was particularly interesting too...
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I ran into a student (circa 18-(low)twenties) using her Blackberry and commented on her using it to text. Her reply was "Yeah, but they're on the way out. None of my friends use them and they're just not cool." When you can't catch and enthrall your own future user base.....
It sounds to me that someone wants to pump up the RIM stock price with rumors . . . before options or whatever expire at the end of the year.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Probably a shill.
>It is interesting to see who will gobble up RIM.
Dear God anybody but HP.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I wouldn't be surprised. Quite sad really.
You can be pretty sure any article from any business news website, financial websites (NY, FT times) have vested interests and inherent bias. Since this is WSJ it's a certainty!
What happened to you World Wide Web? You used to host true facts. It never used to be ONLY smear campaigns, astroturfing, advertisements and junk -- I would adopt countless trolls instead of this fate!
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
For someone seeking employment, would now be a good time to go for a rim job or not?
This would be like if there was a plane crash in the Andes and someone made a big deal that they dodged a bullet because they had once mentioned maybe going to Chile sometime. It's a mammoth jump from one to the next. In the course of conversation even among senior execs they talk about buying THOUSANDS of companies. Only one in a hundred of those gets looked at seriously and only one in a hundred of those get to the bidding stage.
The Journal suggests that this wasn't anything more than a simple idea that came up at one of the regular meetings between senior executives from all three companies â" perhaps it could have even been just a casual talk â" but one wonders how Microsoft and Nokia executives think there is profit to be made by this take over.
One wonders? Really? It seems pretty obvious to me, and the next sentence spells it out:
Maybe RIM provides a good backdoor entry for MS into the enterprise space for its Windows Phone 7?
Bingo. Blackberry, as hard as they're failing in the consumer space, still owns large parts of the enterprise. And enterprise computing has always been MS's bread and butter. Buying RIM would let MS produce devices that are certified to work securely in a business environment (like the existing Blackberries) but have a UI that doesn't totally suck.
What RIM does is anathema to Microsoft. If they buy the company, it'll only be for first shot at the customer base and perhaps some of their technologies, for instance, incorporating some features of BES into Exchange. Don't expect anything like a Blackberry to continue to exist after the sale.
Amazon... I'm not sure.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Rimjobs for everyone!
"Maybe RIM provides a good backdoor entry for MS..." Oooh my!!
I don't really care about the Blackberry, but QNX is a good real-time microkernel operating system, damaged by being resold first to Harmon (an audio company) and now RIM. During all the resales, it's gone from closed source to open (but not free) source to closed source to open source to closed source. This killed all open-source interest in QNX, which used to have a version of Firefox and was usable as a desktop OS, although nobody did this unless they were doing real-time work. QNX, pre-Harmon, contributed heavily to the development of Eclipse, and Eclipse's ability to work on C and C++ programs comes from QNX.
Some industrial automation company should buy QNX. Maybe one will.
I think nokia should buy them this may make nokia better http://symbianfan.com
I see what you did there
All the bits and pieces for RIM are dependent on Microsoft back end. Microsoft buying them to slide into existing Microsoft centric environments is blatantly obvious. Only a blithering idiot could miss that. Nokia's interest is something that eludes me however. With the exception of making themselves more attractive to Microsoft, I don't see the fit.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
MS already provides some remote device management in Exchange, why would they need to buy RIM? Why not just expand what Exchange is capable of doing and make it exclusive to Windows Phone 7?
Exchange corporate ubiquity coupled with WP7 remote management features and the Microsoft controlled WP7 app store might make for an attractive package.
Since they own the app store, MS would then have access to all the details of WP7 apps, allowing easy allow/disallow/install for corporate WP7 devices. They could probably merge in corporate purchasing of apps so that new WP7 phones could get connected to the enterprise Exchange server and then fully provisioned with all of the corporate approved apps, centrally purchased.
And of course there could be a tick box for "Allow only phone which accept WP7 policies", shutting out Android and iPhone for all but the execs who demand those phones. This makes WP7 the corporate standard.
And MS could make WP7 policies an "open" standard which vendors would have to either integrate in their phones or not support, allowing MS to skirt the monopoly issue.
And NONE of this requires any BES technology, just some creative thinking on MS part.
because it's called RIM.
Maybe HP will throw their name in the hat since they have already successfully turned around one mobile phone giant.
ms already has all the interesting stuff they could have from rim.
what they would be buying would be the customer base...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You said, "back door entry".
I can see MS trying to get RIM so that they can add Windows Phones to it, because well.... Windows Phones suck
By the time the hypotetic would be finalized sadly the RIM market share would be close to 5% of all smartphones. Something like that :-/
Do you know the definition of book value? RIM is trading below the value of their real estate, cash assets. You could parcel the company up and sell the real estate to Google and make a profit.
> All the bits and pieces for RIM are dependent on Microsoft back end.
say what?
How much MS do you think they run?
ORACLE! RIM has always been B2B. Oracle has the infrastructure to marry RIM's email servers into ORACLE's cloud. Push the encrypted email & BBM out as software to iPhone & Android and you have a logical, secure business solution that could have direct api calls to ORACLE databases. Huge application opportunities for sales people, CRM etc. etc.