RIM for Sale? Amid Plunging Market Share Investors Say Make it Happen

From DailyTech: Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion, Ltd. circa 2006-2007 appeared unstoppable. The company was beloved by businesses worldwide and was growing fast in market share and sales. Even Democratic Presidential hopeful Sen. Barrack Obama was deeply attached to his BlackBerry smartphone.

Fast-forward five years and that vibrant company is an increasingly distant memory. In its place is a company with a slow pace of releases, dated hardware (the Blackberry 9860, to launch in October, will be BlackBerry's first and only smartphone this fall to compete with Apple, Inc.'s iPhone and Google Inc.'s Android hardware-wise). Unsurprisingly sales growth has slumped both in the U.S. and abroad. Correspondingly, the company's stock has taken a beating at the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Investors, desperate to see a turnaround, have implored RIM to explore a pair of options.

The latest effort suggests that RIM sell its rich catalog of intellectual property -- or perhaps sell its entire business to the highest bidder. Investors salivated at Google's recent purchase of Motorola Mobility, which brought a handsome return for shareholders. A RIM sale would help investors recoup their losses and perhaps even profit.

Google and others are thought to be potential buyers.

The proposal is being spearheaded by Jaguar Financial Corp. JFC refuses to reveal the size of its stake in RIM, but it says it represents a coalition of various shareholders who together hold a bit under 5 percent of the company's stock (RIM has a market cap of $16.45B USD at present, so this works out to roughly $822M USD in stock).

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