Research in Motion has reportedly turned down offers from potential buyers, and is instead hoping to remedy its woes by leveraging upcoming BlackBerry handsets and existing services.
Citing unnamed sources close to the matter, the Chicago Tribune reports that the embattled BlackBerry maker has turned down takeover offers by Amazon.com and others, choosing to look internally to remedy ongoing losses and a plummeting stock price.
In the last year, RIM has seen a dramatic drop in market value with stock prices falling 77 percent after failed handset launches, poor quarterly earnings and overall weak sales. A previous report noted that the company is now worth less than the estimated value of Apple’s App Store.
RIM’s decline comes as the the smartphone market is making gains with record sales of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android OS based devices leading the pack.
Sources say RIM is looking to stem the bleeding by launching new phones, expanding and strengthening existing assets such as BlackBerry Messenger, and restructuring. The company may make licensing deals and explore partnerships, but at this point, a sale of the company, or any joint ventures, are not seen as options.
An investment bank was hired by Amazon to put together a merger offer earlier this year, but an official offer was never made. The two companies are still working together to expand service offerings to BlackBerry users.
“Selling the company or an economic joint venture is probably not in the cards right now,” a source said. “Until you stabilize the platform, people are going to be very nervous about spending $10 billion or more.”
BlackBerry 10 phones have been delayed, sales of the company’s PlayBook tablet have been disappointing, and services outages in the EMEIA region (Europe, Middle East, India and Africa), have all conspired to make it difficult for bankers to find a buyer even if RIM wanted to sell.