BlackBerry and Samsung are not striking any buyout deal, according to Samsung Electronics’ co-chief executive. On Monday, J.K. Shin, co-CEO of Samsung, said the company would like to make a better partnership with BlackBerry but has no intention of acquiring the Canadian handset maker.
Samsung interested in partnership, not acquisition
There have been continuous rumors about Samsung planning to acquire BlackBerry, as the Waterloo, Ontario-based company has struggled to keep its share in the smartphone market.
In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Shin said, “We want to work with BlackBerry and develop this partnership, not acquire the company.” The South Korean company is holding a dialogue with BlackBerry to enhance the scope of its cooperation, including the potential use of BlackBerry technology in Samsung devices. However, there was no detail about the agreement.
Shin stated that an acquisition of BlackBerry will not settle well with the company’s strategy. Samsung is making efforts to enhance its own enterprise security platform called Knox. The world’s largest smartphone maker has already invested a huge amount of capital in Knox over the past few years but is still not able to make a mark with the platform.
“We are satisfied with the progress of Knox, including the quality of security and protection that it enables, and remain committed to Knox over the long term,” the company said.
Not interested in BlackBerry patents either
Additionally, Samsung clarified that it is not interested in BlackBerry’s patent portfolio and instead wants to concentrate on its own, which is one of the biggest in the technology world.
According to Samsung, at the end of 2013, it had registered more than 110,000 patents globally with more than 34,000 of them in the U.S. Analysts believe that BlackBerry’s 44,000 patents could be an attractive addition for Samsung, which has fought many legal battles with Apple over patents. Also Samsung has entered into cross-licensing deals with partners such as Google, which guards the company against some patent litigation.
In November, Samsung and BlackBerry entered into an agreement under which each company will sell the other’s mobile security technology. Samsung has entered into similar deals with other enterprise security companies also, such as Citrix Systems Inc., Good Technology Inc., MobileIron Inc. and VMware Inc.’s AirWatch.
