Carl Icahn rumored to purchase a stake in RIM, may convince them to sell

While RIM may have been one of leading platforms in the smartphone market a couple years back, based on several studies and surveys, RIM has been steadily declining in terms of market share, with the majority currently held by Android and followed by iOS. This combined with the flop of the Blackberry Playbook has caused investors some concern, with Jaguar’s CEO writing a letter urging RIM to consider selling itself or some of its patents if they hope to survive.

Recent rumors have surfaced that investor Carl Icahn may be considering buying himself a huge stake in RIM, and should that happen, based on his activities in the past, we could be seeing RIM sell itself or parts of the company, which could be good news for shareholders depending on how you look at it.

For those unfamiliar with Carl Icahn, he’s an investor who has been known to buy struggling companies, getting a seat on the board and then convincing them that they should sell. While Motorola Mobility can hardly be considered a struggling company, it was Carl Icahn who encouraged Motorola to sell the Mobility division to Google to increase the value of their patents.

As of late, there have been several options outlined for RIM – they could sell their messaging service (BBM) and hardware division as separate entities, and those may come into fruition should Carl Icahn step into the picture. Interestingly RIM’s stock jumped 8% at one point during the rumors.

What do you guys think? Will RIM prevail with their upcoming QNX Blackberry devices or will Carl Icahn’s intervention be better for everyone?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry, patents, RIM