Samsung Interested in Buying Blackberry 10, If It Fails – Jefferies

By Thea Neuman (Google)

If a comment stated by an insider with Jefferies is to be believed then Samsung may clinch an acquisition deal with RIM, in case BB 10 OS fails to do the trick.

However, there are no qualms that RIM will pull out all the stops in playing its cards right but it appears that this Ontario-based company has decided to leave the door open for further negotiations, as a back-up plan.

An analyst with Jefferies further stated that though blackberry 10 is notch above as compared to its predecessor BB7, but it is not in the same league with Apple’s iOS. In his opinion, there are very less chances that BB 10 will prove to be a blockbuster.

Even developers, who got their hands on RIM’s Dev Alpha (a smartphone mock-up), also hold somewhat similar opinion about RIM’s new OS – BB 10. They too feel that BB 10 OS is not patch on ‘iOS 6′. Hence, chances are bleak that RIM would replace iOS with its BB 10 OS. The analyst also commented that by no means BB 10 OS stands in front of Android 4.1.

RIM’s period of ‘strategic reviews’ is now coming to an end, and the company needs to prepare for releasing an update during its earnings call, which is scheduled for September 27. There are strong possibilities that questions would surface regarding an alternative plan in case BB OS fails to create a strong place for itself in the market and that’s where Samsung is likely to come in the picture.

Peter Misek, who is the lead author of this report, opined that Samsung tried negotiating with RIM but then it gave up the talks because it wanted to drive a hard bargain with RIM. However, it is still taking a licensing deal for BlackBerry 10 into consideration.

Samsung has already outperformed yesteryear mobile phone leader Nokia and now it is vying with Apple to grab a bigger market share. Old leading tech-giants like RIM, Motorola and Nokia are finding it hard to digest the fact that a new company which appeared from no-where, is now ruling over the mobile phone market segment. They are even skeptical about Samsung’s long term success.

Misek and his colleagues did try to analyze the success of Samsung and while doing so they came across numerous reasons which have contributed in the company’s achievement. The first reason is that Samsung has made the most of its strategic advantage by leveraging its scale, its vertical integration of hardware and Android OS of Google, in order to achieve a leading position.

Analysts at Jefferies do believe that Samsung may opt from following six options for dealing with the concern of operating system:

• It may continue to be dependent on Android.
• It may develop its own new version of Android.
• It may develop altogether a distinguished version of Android.
• It may consider developing its own new OS.
• It may license BB10.
• It may acquire RIM.

Nevertheless, as of now, there is no point talking about these options because RIM is gearing up for BB 10 launch, which is expected to take place somewhere around early 2013 and we do hope that the launch of BB 10 turns out to be successful.