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Microsoft Reportedly May Acquire BlackBerry
New submitter techtsp writes: Microsoft is just one one of many companies reportedly looking to get a bigger piece of the enterprise mobile market by buying BlackBerry. Reports claim that Chinese firms including Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi are also interested in picking up BlackBerry following the company's recent return to profitability. This report comes on the heels of BlackBerry announcing it is cutting jobs across its global business units in an attempt to consolidate its software, hardware and applications business.
This one will be easier, Microsoft won't have to plant a trojan CEO to annihilate the company's market share first.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Maybe change the name to BlueBerry in homage to the blue screen of death. Or perhaps go for the luxury of BlackRaspBerry. Then again, they could just go for something boring like Apple.
This makes marginally more sense than the SalesForce acquisition, which would've cost MS 10x more and then led analysts to ask, 2-3 years from now, why doesn't Microsoft spin off SalesForce as a separate company?
Blackberry is already failed so the question of a spinoff won't arise. And Windows OS wasn't going anywhere even with Nokia. Might as well try to rope in some corporate accounts and then gradually migrate them to Windows OS.
This is just click bait. China might be interested, so they can rape the code/encryption for military purposes. India might be interested so they can keep the Chinese from having the technology. Microsoft?, only some CEO with a brain aneurism would buy blackberry.
I suppose microsoft might want some of the patents so they could sue someone, but that the only thing blackberry has now.
From the author's bio: "He is having immense interest in psychology, human behavior and mind hacks."
Given that as well as the bad grammar, I'm pretty sure this is made up to get a reaction.
And the entire canadian electronics effort moves to china. nice going there, ay?
"embrace, extend, extuingish". Danger, anyone?
BlueBerry
I'm sure this will be as big a success for Microsoft as their acquisition of Danger, Incorporated, developer of the Danger Hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick, which led the innovative, exciting, youth-oriented Microsoft Kin. And the rest is history.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'm horrified, partly because I'm on the verge of buying a BB Passport. It's the best thing they've done in years, and since playing with SWMBO's (she bought one instead of a galaxy edge, after much comparison). The BB has a nice android implementation, simple hack to add the Google apps, better security and sandboxing of droid apps, and real keys with a touch surface that flows right onto the 1440x1440 touchscreen. Oh, and all that stuffy Blackberry stuff. It's a truly awesome piece of hardware. And now Redmond wants to gut 'em for their IP portfolio and security reputation?
In the mobile market, Microsoft is like King Midas in reverse: everything they touch turns to shit.* But this isn't a rant about Microsoft, it's a worry that Blackberry -- having done the amazing job of pulling out of the total nosedive they were in -- might get stomped just as they level out, and ship something even better. What a disappointment that would be.
*apologies to Tony Soprano
I think not...(*poof*)
MS wants to buy the patents. The let the rest die.
It has been the goal of Microsoft to dominate all digital communications in the western world and as far as possible elsewhere. The acquisition, absorption and decimation of all who have stood in the way is almost complete. Acquiring and then dismantling BB makes perfect sense then making certain that there is no competition in Canada other than Google for corporate mail and communications is the icing on the cake for Redmond. Their tactics of using their OS domination position to corner the information market are obvious and very disturbing. ALL HAIL the new and open MICROSOFT! Same as the old.
The statues of the fallen ( and some soon to die as well)
Blackberry
Corel (Word Perfect)
IBM AIX, Lotus software etc and any attempt they made to network businesses with software other than windows based infrastructure
Nokia
HP Unix
good ol' BSD based Hot Mail
Netscape
And a huge number of others who have tried to compete against Microsoft in the digital information technology market. The Scroogle campaign has not to date done much to Bing the Google thing but it is obvious that the campaign to undermine, defame and absorb them is still alive and screwing over the market place! Milo Minderbinder has nothing on Microsoft!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Hopefully BB will sell QNX before Microsoft gets its hands on the best real-time OS on the market and totally farks it up! FWIW, I have serial number 004. This would just piss me off so much!
Blackberry is really 2 companies:
The secure QNX OS, with a locked down userland with limited functionality, including email. It also manufactures some devices, that use QNX, and userland.
The software, and infrastructure, for controlling large number of QNX devices, and messaging servers.
Microsoft has most of the software components to duplicate Blackberry's software.
Don't be touching my Blackberry Microsoft!!!!
Once they acquire the patents, they'll make a tablet with a keyboard and insist it's not a laptop. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Just a small note, the military is switching to the iPhone 6 from the BlackBerry. Most of the leadership at the very large DoD facility I work for turned in their BlackBerries a few months back for iPhones.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
the encription tech.
Trust me, either way Blackberry will lose a large amount of customers almost overnight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
OMFG, does the evil Empire really need to strike again?!?
It's nice to have closure and know for sure blackberry is coming to an end. History has shown Microsoft is where portable technologies go to die.
Only Microsoft could Trojan-house the CEO of the #1 handset maker in the world and lead it down to utter failure so they could buy it cheaply, *still* fail to execute, and then not promote the guy to Microsoft CEO. Elop - thousands of Finns hate you and for good reason.
Now MIcrosoft wants to do the same to Blackberry. This time they're not even trojaning the CEO.
Microsoft - you had Windows Mobile. Then you had Windows Mobile 2003. You had the MONOPOLY LOCK on smartphones. And, as usual, you f'd it up. You have nothing. And you never will. You won't ever beat Google/Android for #1 or Apple/IOS for #2.
So go ahead, buy Blackberry. Or don't. You're the last-place horse. Congratulations
Cpt Dunsail
Instead of sinking billions into Blackberry, why not spend $500mil on making higher quality apps on the Marketplace store? I bet if they create enough high quality apps/games and then making them free it would pay much higher dividend than acquire another niche mobile device maker. Haven't they learned already that Nokia was a dying ship? The Tmobile Sidekick/Danger was another dying ship before their acquisition.
No, really.
Canada considers BlackBerry as a national Canadian treasure of sorts. It's a huge success story and has been the backbone of just an immense number of high-tech jobs. BlackBerry is a flagship company. As such, Ottawa will never allow it to be sold to outsiders like Microsoft or anyone else.
It's just not going to happen.
This means the value of the company is a lot less than it seems since the value can't be taken out of Canada in any meaningful way.
Sig for hire.
Please see the graph showing the smartphone quarterly sales:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/916271-how-stephen-elop-destroyed-nokia
See that top line? Way above the others? Thats Nokia.
You cannot rewrite history in the Internet age, Elop was a trojan horse,.
http://www.cnet.com/news/nokias-windows-phone-bear-hug-is-choking-the-mighty-finn/
Shit + more shit = shit
After acquiring Blackberry, Microsoft will without a doubt become the largest also-ran in the phone business.
The article and graph correctly shows him starting between Q2 and Q3 2010 of Nokias financial year. It also shows 1 quarter of INCREASING market share for Symbian as Elop joined.
Google was not the top selling Smartphone in the world in Q1 of 2011, Android only led in the US then.
It took him 1 year to nose dive Symbian below Android and iOS not 2 months.
He was a Microsoft trojan, recruited from Microsoft, destroyed Nokia, and received a bonus for selling the corpse to Microsoft. That bonus was paid by Microsoft.
I've never read so much crap from the anti-microsoft brigade for a long time.
I bet that all of them hadn't tried Windows phone 8 and so they feel that they can run it into the ground because it's MS.
The phones are great. The OS is excellent and works well on low end phones too. The Windows store is better than you think and the gui and general operation is easy to use esp with One Drive. Cortana is brilliant. Hands off answers my sms-s with voice recognition.
It all a matter of choice and preference. You like android with all that confusing muddle of updates that stuff things up? Go for it. Like your Apple phone? Then make sure you've got an iPad or Mac to go with it to take full advantage.
Just look up the specs of the newest Lumia 640XL - all for around $300 unlocked. Manufactured in ex Nokia factories, great battery life and a whopping 5.7" screen.
MS will win this. Give them a few years.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
This news is over one week old.
Popcorn futures are already up 5%. This is going to be fun!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Blackberry is already ruined - Microsoft can't do to it what it did to Nokia.
why would Microsoft double down on a dying dud? nothing there but dead weight, a black hole.
patents are cheaper in Chapter 7.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
wait it out, enter the auction. much smarter business.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm liking my passport fwiw. Quite happy with it.
It generates lots of "what is that?" questions. (Funniest one thus far: "A Blackberry, what, are you Canadian?")
By the time BlackBerry is assimilated (or recovers) I will be on to a different handset.