BlackBerry Could be Sold Off in Fragments

From DailyTech: A few bidders are eyeballing struggling phone company BlackBerry, but no one seems to want to buy the company as a whole.

According to a new report by Reuters, bidders interested in a BlackBerry sale are more interested in buying parts of the Canadian company rather than the whole thing. Among the potential bidders include private equity firms, who see BlackBerry's current position in the mobile market as too much of a challenge to buy the entire company -- which is valued at around $5.4 billion USD.

The private equity firms and other bidders are particularly interested in BlackBerry's operating system and the patents for its keyboard. Taking BlackBerry's more valuable parts makes more sense than taking on its troublesome whole.

Reuters broke down BlackBerry's market value by $3 billion to $4.5 billion for its security-based messaging system; $2 billion to $3 billion for a collection of patents, and $3.1 billion in cash and investments. Meanwhile, the company's hardware has little to no value, and could even cost $2 billion to shut down. In total, this is clearly more than its $5.4 billion market value.

Other options for the sale include a Canadian pension fund joining an investor to buy the whole company.

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