Blackberry is like the village girl with so many suitors asking for her hand in marriage but her father (the Blackberry board) has her best interests at heart and is looking for the right man. Could that man be a Chinese? The Wall Street Journal reports that Lenovo could be in line to take over the troubled Canadian device maker.
Lenovo is said to have signed a non-disclosure agreement since it is currently going through Blackberry’s finance books.
Lenovo now joins the likes of former Blackberry co-CEO and co-founder Mike Lazaridis and largest shareholder Prem Watsa in bidding to take charge of the company. Watsa through his Fairax Holdings has made his intentions clear while Lazaridis, the man who co-steered the company he founded in 1984 up until his unceremonial exit in 2012, is looking to take back his company and turn things around with the help of another rarely-talked about co-founder Douglas Fregin. The entry of the Chinese complicates matters but also excites them. Lenovo could turn things around if it acquires Blackberry since the Chinese company has always been very serious with its undertakings. It is not the first time that a Chinese company is being linked with a high profile acquisition. Though the likes of Huawei have backed out of making any large acquisitions, Lenovo is also being linked with HTC.
There are a few headaches about Lenovo as a suitor for Blackberry though. The two North American nations (the US and Canada) where Blackberry hails from have all banned Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE from supplying network equipment to state and private companies in those countries in fear of Chinese espionage. With Blackberry priding itself in enterprise security and already being a big name in that field, this could cause discomfort in some quarters.
