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."

Comments

MS with more patents - Yikes!

[Qwavel]

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.

Re:MS with more patents - Yikes!

[Anonymous Coward]

and that was proven correct when Google-owned Motorola won a preliminary injunction to block sales of iPhones and iPads in Germany.

Considering Google still to this day does not actually have control over Motorola Mobility, they had absolutely no say in Motorola's request for the injunction, which was filed before the Google's acquisition had even been approved much less completed. And that's pretty much irrelevant as the injunction request was a defensive measure as Apple was aggressor in the Motorola/Apple patent war that's now been going on several years.

Re:Amazon phone

[swanzilla]

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.

Less choice for us

[improfane]

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...

Re:Less choice for us

[pionzypher]

While I agree with your point that more choice is better, I have to disagree with your thoughts on the negative press. There have been nothing but negative articles because there's been nothing but negative news coming from RIM. They really are driving themselves into the ground between that nasty outage and lack of response to IOS and Android.

It's sad to lose QNX

[Animats]

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.

Re:RIM is probably on the way out.

[ihatewinXP]

I had an argument with one of the China RIM execs that got thrown off of a plane and arrested last week (boy is he a fun drunk to be around) 3 or 4 years ago. And I told him the same thing:

Me: "Yeah Blackberry is THE business solution at the moment but as an IT guy myself people are already starting to ask how they can get these new fangled iPhones into the business. There is going to be a trickle up effect that you guys sho-."

Him: "What are you an idiot! Apple has NO chance at EVER unseating us. Are you kidding me?! What the hell does a punk like you know?"

And in this manner he carried on and drank long into the night: Blackberry has NOTHING to fear, the iPhone is a toy (just look at the games), and consumers have ZERO effect on business purchases.

And every time I read another death knell for RIM I think of that jackass. If he was one of their global decision makers, and that attitude fit into their corporate culture.... They were lucky to last this long.