Samsung In Talks To Acquire Troubled BlackBerry For $7.5 Billion

MojoKid writes Shares of BlackBerry (BBRY) were up nearly thirty percent as the closing bell sounded this afternoon. What could possibly be behind this sudden spike in interest in shares of a smartphone company whose glory days faded years ago? Well, it turns out that BlackBerry may be ripe for the picking and Samsung is ready to make an offer that John Chen and BlackBerry's board may be reluctant to refuse. According to a report, Samsung is willing to pay roughly $7.5 billion for BlackBerry's assets (including its patent portfolio). Samsung's sudden interest to make a deal comes just two months after the two companies entered a strategic partnership to bring BlackBerry's BES12 cross-platform EMM solution to Galaxy smartphones and tablets that feature embedded KNOX technology. At the time, the two companies indicated that they were looking forward to future ventures together.

Comments

Re:Good luck with that Samsung. Canada will kibosh

[BarbaraHudson]

I doubt Canada will bless the deal. The canadaian government is well known in protecting indigenous companies, Blackberry being one of them. That's why, it meddled in NorTel's affairs till the company went bankrupt.

I wish Samsung all the best.

Nortel went bankrupt because they were stupid - hiring thousands of people without even knowing where they were going to put them, never mind what job they would be doing. They figured the bubble would never end ... same as the housing bubble.

Interesting, despite protestations to the contrary

[rmdingler]

They have some market share in their diversification into the IOT, and 44,000 patents is what they reportedly hold...

So, $7.5 billion is a bargain if Samsung is willing to become entrenched in a long series of patent litigation cases.

Intended.