The world’s No. 1 smartphone manufacturer Samsung Electronics is reportedly planning to acquire Canadian phonemaker BlackBerry Ltd to be able to get a good footing in the corporate market.
While Samsung’s smartphones have been doing well in the global consumer market, it is not as good as BlackBerry or Apple in the corporate market.
The Korean tech giant wants to get a piece of the corporate market share too so it started making moves to acquire the Ontario-based phone manufacturing company.
In a Reuters report published by Yahoo! News, Samsung has reportedly offered to buy BlackBerry’s valuable phone patents for $7.5 billion to finally edge its nearest competitor Apple in the corporate market.
The report said that Samsung made a per share offer to BlackBerry that is from 38 percent to 60% percent higher than the share price of the Canadian phone manufacturing firm in the stock market.
Denying the buyout offer
Upon learning of the reported Samsung offer, share prices of BlackBerry soared by about 30% before settling for 15% increase a few hours after the two companies denied the acquisition offer.
BlackBerry was the first to make the official denial of the buyout offer. In a statement, the company said that it has not engaged in any discussion with Samsung with respect to possible offer to purchase BlackBerry.
Samsung also seconded the denial from its Seoul head office. A spokeswoman of the company said that media reports about Samsung’s plan to acquire BlackBerry are groundless.
It could be that the BlackBerry is just haggling around the offer made by Samsung because accordingly, its Board believes that a price of $7 billion is way below the company’s asset value in the next few years. It goes without saying that they actually think that Samsung can still do better than a $7.5 billion offer.
Security analysts also believe that BlackBerry may indeed be looking for a better offer from Samsung saying that the company does not just want to sell specific assets but the whole thing. They said that Samsung should think of buying the entire company and subsequently dispose those that it does not need later on.
Regaining lost ground
BlackBerry has pioneered the smartphones. It was once an investor darling in North American stock markets but due to stiff competition, the company has lost its edge to Apple, Samsung, and Google.
With the assumption into office of CEO John Chen, BlackBerry started to become aggressive again beginning with the launching of the BlackBerry Passport last year. On January 14, the company launched its Classic models, resembling its very popular models Bold and Curve, in order to win back the market and attract existing customers with BlackBerry smartphones, which it refers to as devices with keyboards.
In November, BlackBerry announced a security partnership with Samsung that wed BlackBerry’s security platform with Samsung’s security software for its Galaxy devices.