14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like BlackBerry’s successful decisions to cut costs and become profitable once again hadn’t gone unnoticed by major players in the smartphone market.
Lenovo is one of the handset makers that prefer to expand its operations by acquiring other companies instead of investing in R&D and introducing innovative products.
Even though we thought the Chinese company’s insatiable thirst for expansion has been met with Motorola’s acquisition earlier this year, but it looks like Lenovo has another name on the shopping list.
BlackBerry is supposed to receive a buying offer from Lenovo as early as this week, blog site Benzinga reports citing “a source familiar with the matter.”
We recommend our readers to take the news with a huge grain of salt, as the information hasn’t been confirmed through other sources for the moment.
It’s also worth mentioning that this won’t be the first time Lenovo is trying to acquire the Canadian company BlackBerry. For those out of the loop, the Canadian government did not agree with the acquisition back in January 2013 when Lenovo offered to purchase BlackBerry.
National security concerns were invoked by the Canadian government at that time, so we can’t help but wonder what has changed since last year that Lenovo will be allowed to acquire BlackBerry without opposition from the Canadian government.
Anyways, according to the cited source, Lenovo plans to offer to purchase BlackBerry at $15 / €11.75 per share, but estimates it will be able to close the deal at around $18 / €14.1 per share.
The Canadian government did not allow a previous deal between the two companies
Lenovo announced this month it will launch another company in April 2015, which will focus on Internet-based smart device and will operate under a different name and brand.
If the rumor regarding Lenovo’s acquisition offer for the Canadian company proves to be true, there’s a slight chance that the new company to be launched will be BlackBerry.
Even though we are pretty skeptic at the thought of BlackBerry being bought by a Chinese company, we reckon we should not rule out this possibility, as microscopically small as it sounds.
The good news is we won’t have to wait too long to verify the accuracy of this rumor, as Lenovo is expected to make the first step towards the said acquisition sometime this week.
We are pretty sure that most BlackBerry fans are worried at the thought of their favorite company being acquired by a Chinese company, even if Lenovo has a good enough record when it comes to business-oriented equipment.
If the Canadian government allows Lenovo to make a bid for BlackBerry, do you think the company’s CEO John Chen will accept the offer although he previously stated he wouldn't sell it for less than $19 billion (€15 billion)?