Another day, another rumor dealing with the future of BlackBerry. This time round a Reuters report suggests the company has “narrowed its list of potential bidders” in an effort to push for a quick sale, which — as we reported earlier — could happen as early as November. It is suggested that private equity firm Fairfax Financial Holdings, which owns a 10% stake in the business, is interested in acquiring the rest of BlackBerry, while Microsoft is also watching with great care how things are progressing in the North. Moreover an unnamed Canadian pension fund may be looking to team up with an investor to buy the company, which is currently worth a little more than $5 billion.
Another scenario envisions breaking up BlackBerry into two companies, one owning operating system and network assets, and the other one with a patent portfolio. Once separated, these two parts could apparently bring even more money (more than $5 billion) to investors. On the other hand, BlackBerry’s hardware production business isn’t something anyone cares about, since that part could presumingly be outsourced to Asian companies.
As we would expect, BlackBerry is mum on these speculations and is rather preparing to unveil the Z30 (or so we hope) at an event taking place next week…