BlackBerry rejected offers from Microsoft, Apple and Lenovo
Sources familiar with the matter have revealed to Reuters that BlackBerry’s board has declined several offers from companies like Microsoft, Apple, Lenovo and others. According to the report, BlackBerry has rejected all proposals and all of them were only for parts of the business and not the company as a whole.
The board doesn’t want to break up the company and tries to safe BlackBerry’ assets as a whole, which would satisfy shareholders, employees and customers. On the other hand, Microsoft and Apple are interested in BlackBerry intellectual property and patents. As you know, Microsoft is going to complete the deal with Nokia in 2014, and the software giant is not likely to be interested in buying another OEM. Instead, the tech leaders are trying to secure as many patents as possible in their portfolio. It is not a rare case for even fierce competitors to team up with others to buy patents from other companies. In 2011 for example, the Canadian Nortel bankrupted and its patents were sold to a group of companies including BlackBerry, Apple, Microsoft and others.
In addition to the discussions with Apple and Microsoft, BlackBerry reportedly held talks with Cisco, Google and Lenovo. BlackBerry’s officials have declined to comment, but it’s clear that the proposals have been rejected. As we reported last week, the deal with Fairfax fell through after the Canadian hedge fund failed to raise the $4.7 billion needed to complete the deal. Instead, convertible notes for 1 billion were issued in order to secure the short term finance resource. The new CEO of the company hopes the company can return into profitability soon. Another alternative for BlackBerry would be Lazaridis / Fregin partnership and Qualcomm.
Source: Reuters
