RIM’s stock jumped yesterday on the rumour that Vodafone is considering acquiring the maker of BlackBerry. RIM’s market share is continuing to dwindle, and if the launch of QNX-powered smartphones early next year doesn’t pan out, they may very well be in the market for acquisition.
I find the rumour a little hard to swallow. Sure, service providers will partner up with manufacturers to help build the kind of phone they want to see on shelves, but how often do they take complete control of the manufacturing process? Of course, it’s possible that Vodafone is just interested in RIM’s back-end infrastructure, which provides secure, compressed, and speedy data delivery to BlackBerry devices. With RIM-style servers in place, Vodafone could be able to significantly lighten the load across their many networks, presuming they figure out a way to provide compatibility with Android and iOS devices.
If things get to the point where RIM needs to start liquidating, I imagine it will be piece by piece, and if this Vodafone rumour pans out, it would only be for a portion of RIM’s assets. The only company I could imagine purchasing BlackBerry wholesale at this point is Cisco since they’re already heavily invested in the infrastructure and enterprise spaces, their financials are looking decent, and they’ve been dabbling with smartphone-ish devices. Still, I’m going to hold off on placing acquisition bets until the first QNX BlackBerry smartphone comes out; once it’s out, we’ll know if RIM is well and truly done for.
[via WSJ]