According to the source:
The board rejected proposals from several technology companies for various BlackBerry assets on grounds that a break-up did not serve the interest of all stakeholders, which include employees, customers and suppliers in addition to shareholders, said the sources, who did not want to be identified as the discussions were confidential.
One of the sources said the board also took into consideration the current cost of the break-up. Winding down some of BlackBerry’s businesses would have created liabilities, including in its commitments with suppliers, and would have weighed on the monetization of the company’s intellectual property, the source said.
The report also points out that Apple and Microsoft were also interested in patients and Intellectual property rights. Moreover, Apple may have even bought enterprise features, secure messaging architecture and device management software o the company. BlackBerry’s current patent value is $3 billion.
BlackBerry had $1 billion worth of unsold devices, and had 4,500 layoffs. The BlackBerry 10 OS and Z10 were a failure, and the company’s latest BBM is playing catch up with WhatsApp, Viber and other such software.
The company was intially set to be sold to Fairfax Financial Holdings for $4.7 billion, but plans were dropped and CEOs were changed. Now the company is issuing $1 billion convertible notes to investor groups. This will give BlackBerry a short-term lifeline as it manages to revive itself out of crisis.
The new CEO Thorsten Heins was hired after the departure of Jim Balsille and Mike Lazaridis
So do you see an escape route for BlackBerry ?
