BlackBerry stunned the masses this week by deciding to end all talks of selling the business and opting to take a billion dollar investment from various organizations.
There has been several rumours that Lenovo, Cisco, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and BlackBerry co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin were interested in making a bid for the troubled company, or parts of the business. These were all true, but today a report from Reuters reveals that BlackBerry’s board declined any proposal that involved breaking the company up into parts, specifically noting that going this route “did not serve the interest of all stakeholders, which include employees, customers and suppliers in addition to shareholders.” Many of the potential bidders, namely Apple and Microsoft, were interested in their IP and patents.
Over the next few months, under the new leadership of John Chen, BlackBerry will focus on the enterprise market and launch several new smartphones, plus continuing to bring additional features to BBM on Android and iPhone. We’ll also BlackBerry launch BBM Channels and possibly unveil BBM for the desktop.
Source: Reuters
