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Samsung once again denies any interest in RIM acquisition

Published: Aug 09, 2012, 12:51 PM

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Samsung once again denies any interest in RIM acquisition

Just a quick follow up to yesterday’s rumors that claimed (once again) that Samsung was the leading candidate to either acquire Research in Motion or license BB10 from them. Reuters has relayed a somewhat terse response from Samsung, once again denying any interest in buying out the beleaguered Canadian company.

Samsung spokesperson James Chung told Reuters:

"We haven't considered acquiring the firm and are not interested in (buying RIM).”

Chung also indicated that Samsung had not been approached by RIM for a takeover, so apparently there are no current overtures from either side. Of course this statement wouldn’t rule out licensing BB10, but as we discussed yesterday Samsung has little incentive to license an unproven OS right now, with their rampant success with Android. Their involvement with Windows Phone has also served as something of a lesson in how hard it is to succeed with a new OS even if your product is solid and it’s shipping, let alone with the long-delayed and still unfinished BB10 project.

It’s almost certain that if Samsung were to license BB10 it would happen after BB10 is complete, and probably only after a successful launch that demonstrated consumer interest. Such a thing isn’t impossible either – there are still tens of millions of BlackBerry users, and the brand still engenders a decent amount of brand loyalty – if RIM can knock this release out of the park then in 2013 they may find themselves with several willing hardware partners, and Samsung could well be one of them.

But probably not right now.

source: Reuters via TechCrunch