Back at the end of last week the tech news world was ablaze with rumors that Samsung was in talks to buy BlackBerry, The news literally came out of nowhere and immediately exploded with speculation. Within hours, both BlackBerry and Samsung released individual statements with both stating the same thing – Samsung has not and will not be in talks to buy BlackBerry. Neither company seemed keen on the idea and both adamantly wanted to deny it. Well, after the smoke from the rumor fires have died down, Samsung has once again reiterated that they did not (and do not) intend to buy BlackBerry. The latest denial came directly from J.K. Shin, the Co CEO of Samsung.
In an interview given to the Wall Street Journal (source link below), Shin was adamant that a purchase of BlackBerry would be contrary to Samsung’s own goals and ambitions. This is largely because Samsung has focused heavily on developing their own security service Knox and apparently are less interesting in adopting BlackBerry’s security portfolio over their own. According to Shin, Samsung is more than happy with the direction Knox is moving in and have no intention of altering that course. There was also assumptions that Samsung would be interested in BlackBerry’s patent portfolio, although again, Shin was quick to dismiss this, by touting Samsung’s own current patent range. Noting that they currently have over 110,000 patents of their own (compared to BlackBerry’s 44,000) with over 34,000 patents in the US alone.
That said, Shin was keen to note that Samsung do have every intention of further developing their relationship with BlackBerry. If you remember, back in November, Samsung and BlackBerry entered into an agreement to combine their respective Knox and BES12 services together. According to Shin, it is this relationship that Samsung hope to progress in the future with the two companies currently in talks to possibly include BlackBerry technology in future Samsung devices. Beyond the confirmation of the talks of developing the relationship between the two, no further details were given on the possible extension. What do you think of the Samsung/BlackBerry situation? Would you have liked to of seen Samsung purchase Blackberry? Would you still like to see BlackBerry tech on Samsung devices? Let us know.