Slashdot Mirror
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.
Given that the number of remaining (since the Free Trade Agreement with the USA) indigenous Canadian companies that are:
1) much more than mom & pop operations
2) haven't been bought out by a foreign company, and
3) don't simple rape and pillage raw resources for export
can, I think, be counted on the fingers of one hand (with fingers to spare) I'd say the Canadian Government has done a rather poor job protecting them. Let's see ... we have Bombardier, and ... hmm ... I'd have to think for a while ...
"They typically don't comment. Denying something that is true is a great way to get sued by shareholders."
I don't know about that. They denied that they would make an Android or iPhone BBM app for the entire time they would have been developing them.
I am most curious about what Samsung would do with QNX if it was to acquire it. QNX is something that should not be allowed to die. Samsung could afford to do this deal, and release QNX as opensource. It's of no particular use to them unless they want to ditch Tizen and Android.
It's far more likely that a US company will buy Blackberry in the same context of Burger King buying Tim Hortons. Tax dodge + distribution chain.
Like, the only player out there that would actually benefit from acquiring Blackberry would be Microsoft. But only of QNX was divested first. If Microsoft bought Blackberry while it owns QNX, we lose one more viable mobile OS. Microsoft has no interest in running anything but Windows on everything.
Samsung buying Blackberry would accomplish nothing except maybe give Samsung QNX. But Korean management practices will just bloat the hell out of it and it will become unusable, just like their SmartTV products.
Every mobile phone has had their own in-house OS more or less. Android just made it more attractive for any bozo chinese counterfeiter to to try and pass off something as the real deal. Samsung is in a race to the bottom with LG for smartphones and smartTV's. Nobody seems to want to learn from Nokia or Ericsson. You sell only three devices per market:
a) A basic model
b) A feature model
and
c) A Fully loaded model.
Car dealerships have known this for decades. Most people will buy the Basic or Feature model, but only the richest people buy the fully loaded model because it's a frivolous status expenditure. I know I only need a Honda Civic, but what I want is a Toyota Prius. My parents however are old and want a large American car (and their also overweight.)
This is like going. "I know I only need a Nokia dumb-phone, but everyone is selling Android at a loss, but what I want (and would actually use) is an iPhone"
You make most of your money on that middle tier model. The high end model you don't make much money on, but you make up for it in service costs, while the basic model you make most of your money in quantity, knowing fully damn well that few will ever be serviced there.
Like I can get a 30$ phone plan, as long as I don't need data or texting. The first plan available with data is 80$ fucking dollars a month and it's the only plan you can use on an iPhone.