There have been some rumors online that Samsung, or perhaps even HTC, are considering buying RIM. Samsung has already said these rumors are false and they are not trying to buy RIM: “We haven’t considered acquiring the firm and are not interested in (buying RIM).”, said Samsung spokesman James Chun.
Whether you actually believe Samsung or not, there is a reason Samsung or any other company won’t buy RIM right now even if they wanted to. First of all, I think an Android manufacturer like Samsung buying RIM would be a pretty great idea, and it would help themselves but also the whole Android ecosystem to strengthen its enterprise play.
But they are not going to do it as long as RIM keeps thinking of itself as a company that is in no danger of going bankrupt anytime soon, and demand a lot of money for the company. I happen to think RIM is very much in danger of collapsing within 2 years, and their current strategy of continuing with BB10 will not work. It won’t be the 3rd platform, and there’s no room for a 4th platform, unless they want to be a much smaller company and stay at the very bottom of the market, which I doubt it’s something they want.
There’s no way a single-company OS will be able to fight against Apple, the one and only company that has succeeded having its own OS and not giving it to anyone, when Palm, HP, Nokia have failed. They need to be part of an ecosystem if they want to have any kind of success. RIM doesn’t see that now, so they will keep behaving like the company is not in danger of collapsing.
As long as they think that, they will want to sell the company for at least $10 billion, and I don’t think they are worth that much. So unless they are cutting that price in half any time soon, nobody will buy RIM. Unfortunately for RIM, this means they will not be acquired until they are on the edge of collapse and they are willing to sell for a much smaller price, but this means nobody will even want them then, because even at a lower price it will not be a “good deal”.