BlackBerry may be thinking to go private and get some “breathing room to fix its problems out of the public eye.” Citing “several sources familiar with the situation,” the Reuters report says that the Canadian company is in talks with private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, which is the same company that leads Dell’s current private dealings. However, it is added that “no deal is imminent” and “BlackBerry has not launched any kind of a sale process.”
When Thorsten Heins took over the reins at BlackBerry he said that they “don’t have the economy of scale to compete against the guys who crank out 60 handsets a year,” adding the BlackBerry should differentiate and have a focused platform. “To deliver BB10 we may need to look at licensing it to someone who can do this at a way better cost proposition than I can do it. There’s different options we could do that we’re currently investigating,” Thorsten added.
The way I see it, BlackBerry should launch some sort of tablet dock as soon as possible to differentiate its offering from the rest of the pack… and whether it goes private or not, that doesn’t matter as much. What do you think?