Lenovo reportedly considering a bid to buy BlackBerry
Thoughts?
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Would be interesting, though security would come into question, especially for government and companies that require data security.
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Speaking of Blackberry, I really like my Torch. Excellent keyboard (yeah I know) that is backlit and is lovely to send text messages on. Physical keys on a phone make send quick messages very nice and smooth.
As for Lenovo buying Blackberry, yawn. Another merger, another line of products getting diluted and merged with other products. If it happens, though. -
Meh, who knows if anything will come of it.
I bet almost every phone manufacturer will sign a non-disclosure agreement with BlackBerry to take a look at the company's books. Firms usually just want to learn more about the business they currently compete with and a business that one of their competitors might buy. It would be remiss for Lenovo NOT to look at Blackberry's books while they have the chance. -
I don't see it happening.
If it does, I know my employer will be dropping BB like a hot potato, and issuing us...something else.
As would many governments around the globe.
My $0.02 only... -
Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?
All I can hear are the echoes of HP buys Palm...
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Still, I have my doubts Lenovo will buy RIM. Many other suitors out there, and then there's the Canadian government's protectionism to contend with. -
It would be nice to see BB get a proper burial. Lenovo can afford it.
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It's very unlikely Lenovo would be allowed to acquire Blackberry. It's possible that it could acquire just the hardware handset IP, but that's a long shot and not in Blackberry's best interest.
Lenovo's PCs are banned by government agencies in U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand and some other countries because of "backdoors" found in their hardware.
BlackBerry's most valuable asset is their internal secure email network, and since their secure email network is approved by and used by these governments, Lenovo would never be allowed to acquire it.
There was a news article published on Reuters about this just yesterday. -
If Lenovo buys Blackberry, then Blackberry can be revived. It might mean a death of the brand in the international goverments, but that sacrafice is well wroth the access to the chinese market. True Blackberry fans would still follow the brand just like Thinkpad.
Currently, BB10 is the best smartphone OS in terms of features. The only think blackberry needs presently is competitive hardware (BB is still selling 2011 quality hardware) and more apps (the BB10 app store is a joke, many popular apps are missing, a large number is spam, and users are resorting to semi-successful old android ports.)
With Lenovo however, they can put the best of blackberry (messaging, UI) and put in on Andoid to instantly solve the Apps problem. Then we can all trust Lenovo with decent hardware. As for the reputation problem, Blackberry is dying anyway, so might as well give up and the American market and aim overseas. -
Not to mention the fact that Canadian government won't allow such a sale...not by a long stretch.
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Anyway, Being bought up by a larger, successful company (assuming that the Canadian government would even allow BB to be bought by Lenovo) will not necessarily result in BB turning their luck around. An example I can think of is Microsoft first using Nokia as a flagship WP maker, then recently just buying them out. Despite that, Nokia's still not doing so well in the smartphone market since switching from Symbian to Windows Phone, though at least Nokia has their dumbphone market to fall back on, an option BlackBerry does not have. This is probably because they run Windows Phone now, and that's not exactly a widely popular OS (though I personally love WP and I own a Lumia), and I can't image why porting BlackBerry to Android would help, aside from apps. IMO, that'd just make BB "just another Android maker" in the already-crowded Android phone OEM market.
The major, major problem, ignoring the other problems like app market, marketing, and such, is what others have previously pointed out: secure communication. Blackberry, as they current stand, and in the past, can offer a high amount of security and I don't feel that their security reputation has faded much at all. Hell, I shake my head whenever I see people wanting to use Android, iOS, and Windows Phone in the same way that BB has historically been used, since those mobile operating systems have much weaker security models than BlackBerry. On the flip side, Lenovo has *no* reputation for data security. Partly because they don't offer such data protection services, and partly because a decent chunk of Lenovo is owned by the Chinese government, which means Western governments and companies with a high security requirement won't trust them. If Lenovo were to buy BlackBerry, they'd only succeed in destroying BlackBerry's security reputation and not doing much to improve Lenovo's. As for Thinkpads, they're nice and all as far as build quality and such, but there's still the "what if the Chinese are installing backdoors in Thinkpads?" problem to contend with. -
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My hat's off to them for doing so...very rarely do I praise government for displaying common sense (since governments usually do the opposite by default) but this is one such occasion...
Rumor: Lenovo reportedly considering a bid to buy BlackBerry
Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by takeabyte, Oct 17, 2013.