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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."
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!
So all your calls would take twice as long as estimated to get there and be broken up when they do?
Interesting troll. You passed on three easy targets in order to jab Amazon. Well played.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
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!
>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.
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.
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.
I can see MS trying to get RIM so that they can add Windows Phones to it, because well.... Windows Phones suck
Sounds like the OP may be suffering from some sort of yuletide rage. It's pretty common around the retail season, spreads faster than green boogers in a kindergarten class.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
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.
To be fair I can't really blame him, this time last year I had the same feelings about Amazon as their guaranteed next day deliveries took 3 weeks to arrive.
This year I learnt my lesson, and just haven't bought anything from them.
As you say, it's a seasonal thing, even retailers like Amazon aren't equipped to deal with the volume this time of year and fuck up people's orders with such regularity that it's like they're actually getting a hardon over it. Throw in the stress of people wanting to get everything sorted for christmas so little Timmy and the Wife aren't left with nothing to open on Christmas day and you've got a perfect storm for the creation of retailer trolling.
And as a counter anecdote, the half dozen times I have used Amazon, they have delivered within a day or two. To be honest, if you leave Christmas shopping until the week before Christmas, you're asking for trouble whoever you shop with.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well indeed, my anecdote wasn't designed as a fanboy pissing contest, merely an illustration of the fact that this time of year (not just one week before christmas, but from around the beginning of December) things get a bit crazy for online retailers, the level of service drops dramatically, and more people than usual do suffer delayed products and so forth. Your anecdote of usually good service doesn't seem to hold any relevance to my point that this time of year, service is decreased for a greater number of people than usual.
I don't even really have a problem with that per-se if they're transparent about it, but obviously when they offer guaranteed next day delivery and it arrives 3 weeks later, something has gone horribly wrong and at that point they should be removing the guaranteed option as they clearly couldn't actually guarantee it. In my case, it added insult to injury that I had to resort to trading standards and the small claims court to even get them to refund what I paid for that failed guarantee because their CS refused.
When I ordered books from them in the summer I too received them next day, great service as I'd expect. But that doesn't change the fact that this time of year, you see an increase in pissed off customers as a result of degradation in service due to increased volume. It doesn't change the fact that I personally wouldn't rely on them for anything time sensitive from aroud the beginning of December to actually deliver on any promises they make about delivery times.
You're also right that this isn't an Amazon only thing, other retailers suffer the same problem, but I thought I'd already made that clear.