According
to reports from Reuters, Blackberry is looking to take the company private to
give it a better chance of surviving in the increasingly hard smartphone
market.
Reuters
report that Chief Executive Thorsten Heins and the company’s board is
increasingly coming around to the idea that taking Blackberry private will give
it room to improve and solve its problems.
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| Image: Engadget |
“There is a
change of tone on the board,” a source told Reuters on Thursday. It is thought
that Blackberry could be looking to Silver Lake for a collaboration. Silver
Lake is currently involved in a battle to take Dell Corporation private.
This year
alone, Blackberry’s share has fallen more than 19% and its market value has
fallen to $4.8bn, from $84bn in 2008. The latest data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) if anything, has only compounded Blackberry’s woes.
Blackberry
is now the fourth largest smartphone maker after losing ground on Windows phone
as it dropped from holding 4.9% of the smartphone market in the second quarter
of 2012 to holding 2.9% in Q2 of 2013.
Blackberry
10 and the launch of devices like Z10 and Q10 which were expected to change the
fortunes of Blackberry have done little to revive the ailing company.
In a
related development, Bloomberg reports that in less than a day after Reuters
released the news about the possibility of Blackberry going private, its stock
climbed 4.7% to $9.66 at 12:16pm in New York and earlier traded at $9.89, the
highest level since July 9.
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Blackberry open to taking the company private