RIM’s future is a bit uncertain at the moment. We shared our doubts about the company’s prospects with you during our 2012 predictions, noting just how much is riding on this year’s planned BlackBerry 10 launch. We’re not the only ones wondering about what RIM may be planning in order to help revitalize the company, and earlier this year there were a couple rumors going around about RIM and Samsung along those lines. First we heard that RIM was considering licensing its platform to other smartphone manufacturers, including Samsung, to let them produce their own BlackBerry-line devices. Later, a separate rumor suggested that Samsung might take things one step further and acquire RIM outright. Samsung rejected that theory, but the idea of licensing has lingered. Today, a rise in RIM stock prices is being attributed by those in the finance community to RIM talking with Samsung about investment and licensing issues; is there some new development, or are old rumors just getting re-hashed?

While a lot of the components of today’s rumors mirror those we heard back in January, there are a few differences and new pieces of information. For instance, there’s renewed talk of Samsung putting money into RIM, but instead of trying to take over the company, now it’s supposedly interested in just making a minority investment.

The other interesting component to what we’re hearing today has to do with Samsung’s motivations. According to these claims, Samsung may be looking to diversify with RIM in direct reaction to Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility. While we haven’t seen any signs that the deal will negatively impact the Android community, Samsung may be a bit more nervous.

We’re still not convinced just how much of this news is based in fact, and how much is conjured-up investor speculation, but if there is any truth to it, we’d hope for some evidence of Samsung BlackBerry development before the end of the year.

Source: Barron’s

Via: Mobile Syrup