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As RIM continues to stumble down the long stairway to oblivion, Reuters reports that the company had an unlikely suitor this summer that could have saved them: Amazon. Wait, what? Or more importantly… why?
The deal, obviously, didn’t go through; RIM is still RIM and Amazon still has those hundreds of millions of pounds in its coffers. But what’s interesting is that it seems like RIM was the party to ultimately reject the deal, opting instead to try to turn around the ship on its own. That’s odd, isn’t it? Given how much the beleaguered handset maker would have to gain from financial stability and an unparalleled distribution channels provided by Amazon? And how seemingly little Amazon would gain from towing a sinking ship?
Reuters doesn’t speculate as to what Amazon saw in RIM, but there are a few possibilities that come to mind. Both companies have strong cloud presences, so maybe there’s synergy there. Maybe Amazon has been emboldened enough by its Kindle Fire succes that it wants to venture into smartphones as well. Maybe the siren call of BBM is just too great. Or maybe they were just visiting the lot, took one kick at the tires, and realised they were looking at a lemon.
Still, Amazon and RIM are “discussing ways to expand their commercial ties,” according Reuters. Which, if you’re RIM, discuss harder. Because you only get so many life vests thrown at you before people are happy just to let you drown. [Reuters]
#corrections http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_knight_(business)
Ah yes *sigh*
Sorry
here’s hoping for a White Night on the 24th though, eh?
I would’ve thought it was obvious why both parties were in talks and why RIM pulled away.
RIM hasn’t had a stellar year but it has a decent base in enterprise, somewhere Amazon doesn’t, it has proprietary software established and new ones on the way, they have a ready and capable manufacturing set-up, and patents. If you were going to buy them, now would be the time to do it, get in there for next year, turn things around a bit to help establish Amazon as a bigger player in the tech world and boost RIM’s reputation at a time when it is on the slide but not irreparably damaged. A bit like HP’s original plan for Palm/WebOS before they totally screwed it all up, ditched the CEO who had developed the plans and put in a new CEO who decided to stick to what he knew.
RIM, on the other hand, could’ve benefitted financially, but at what cost. The CEOs clearly either don’t have a coherent plan for the company, or don’t have enough support from their employees to make it happen, or don’t have enough people of the right calibre to implement the changes. None of that would change by selling out. Instead you would open yourself up to Amazonisation of the brand, potentially damaging RIM’s enterprise devision and becoming too reliant on the consumer sector, thus potentially removing the single biggest support for the company at present. They clearly think they are onto a winner in QNX/BB10 and to open that up to Amazon’s skinning, when Amazon have shown a leaning to Android for most of the year would risk the opportunity to develop RIM. It may not make sense from a detached & outside perspective but they aren’t on the outside, and they aren’t detached.