We love a good old rumour - and the latest one is that dear old woe-hit BlackBerry-maker, RIM, is looking to sell itself to South Korean giant, Samsung.
BGR claims that sources have told it the company is considering licensing its software to other vendors but is now leaning more towards a full acquisition by a third party of either specific divisions - or even the entire company. And its little ears within the Canadian company have spilled that Samsung is the front runner.
RIMs main selling points are - of course, its email and BBM services. Other aspects (like the App World and music) are not as fluid as they are on other operating systems. But BlackBerry's seemingly unbreakable bond of trust with its users was broken last October when the service went down and many long-time devotees jumped ship.
Since then, there've been rumours of it looking to license BBM out to Android users - but we've not seen anything concrete come of it. And, we hate to say it for fear of editorialising, but many would agree that in the face of innovation from Apple, Google - and now Microsoft - BlackBerry certainly looks like its had its day.
The company is working on its BBX OS and there have been some nice leaks of upcoming devices, so perhaps all is not lost. But in the same way that Apple went from boom to near bust and then rose to become one of the world's biggest companies, it could be that RIM just needs some new leadership. Recent attempts to get rid of bosses there have yielded little fruit for revolutionaries within.
Obviously, Research in Motion is keeping very tight lipped on all aspects of takeovers and sales and there have been various other claims over the last few months. Stocks rose recently on the news that RIM had engaged Goldman Sachs to help it look for a new Mummy or Daddy.
And Samsung, of course, is denying everything, with a spokesperson telling Reuters "we haven't considered acquiring the firm and are not interested in [buying RIM]", adding that no approach had been made to RIM and that Samsung had no interest in a licensing deal either for good measure.
If a deal was to be struck, the cost would likely be somewhere between $10 billion and $15 billion though this is, of course, market and secrecy dependent. Expect no further news until a deal has been hammered out (aside from obvious leaks, of course).
