Samsung had made implausible appearance at CES in Las Vegas this year; everywhere the breezes of the company were blowing. Samsung’s TV, Tablets, and Smartphones were dazzling customers, and undeniably, the company deserves all these praises. Recently, in 2011, Samsung has surpassed 300 million mobile handset shipments. If Samsung is performing outstandingly in the market than what’s the need of the company to buy RIM ? On the other side, if Samsung acquires ‘already struggling’ RIM then it’s beyond the expectation what Samsung can do. For the time being, mobile site Boy Genius had reported that Samsung was at forefront position to acquire RIM.
BGR’s Jonathan Geller wrote, “We have heard that [RIM co-CEO] Jim Balsillie is actively meeting with almost every company that might be interested in either a part or all of RIM, in addition to having talks about licensing. “Jim is going hard after Samsung,” said a source with knowledge of the negotiations.”
But, Reuters published updates yesterday that Samsung has finally denied from the acquisition of RIM. Samsung spokesman—James Chung—said, “We haven’t considered acquiring the firm and are not interested in (buying RIM). Samsung had not been approached by the Canadian firm for a takeover.”
There were lots of reasons why was Samsung interested to acquire RIM. First, Samsung might consider to merge RIM due to its Blackberry Messenger, which will benefit the company to move out from the Android ecosystem.
Second,There was also probability that Samsung might integrate BBM and several enterprise features into Android to make device more competitive to threat their rivals. As the competitiveness is handset model is becoming more intense with the launch of handsets on every inch, the need for differentiation will be the key of success for any smartphone manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, Sony, Motorola as almost every one is betting big on the common platform called Android. If ,some how, Samsung manages to bring a perfect blend of best of Android and BBX, the uniqueness will surely roar in the market. Therefore after acquisition, Samsung might have the opportunity to differentiate itself on the software and OS level.
RIM is looking for more than $10 billion for the complete sale, but the company’s total value in last week of December 2011 was just $7.04 billion which was less than its actual worth $7.08 billion.
I think high acquisition value ( and expectations) of RIM might be responsible for Samsung’s denial, and executives of RIM—Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie—is itself a big hurdle for the suitors. Both the executives of the company own more than 10% of the overall shares in the company. Anyway, acquisition of RIM will definitely benefit to both in order to make zenith position in the mobile sector.
