If there’s one thing that still redeems Blackberry, it must be its security features, but up until now no other company has thought of acquiring the Canadian smartphone manufacturer for its patents. Samsung is attempting to do that in order to improve the security of its mobile devices.
The patent war has been going on for a few years now, and most acquisitions are made exactly with the purpose of having some unique advantages over the competition. Blackberry may not be getting a lot of love for its design, nor for its latest mobile platform, but there still one area where it excels. Security patents are the things that keep Blackberry relevant in a world where all the other technical specs are changing every other month. Sure, the Passport had flagship specs at the time of its launch, but there aren’t a lot of people out there fond of its design. Hence, Samsung buying Blackberry could lead to those security features being implemented in more pocket-friendly devices. Bear in mind that neither of them confirmed the rumors, despite Reuters claiming to even know the sum Samsung would pay for Blackberry: $7.5bn.
That’s not supposed to mean that without Blackberry’s patent portfolio Samsung would be naked as a jaybird when facing hackers. South Korea’s tech giant has its own security platform, known as KNOX (not an acronym, just a reference to Fort Knox), but considering that the best devices coming from this manufacturer are running Android, a few additional layers of security wouldn’t hurt. Android has a bit of a dark history as far as security is concerned, with the latest story revealing that Google refuses to fix a bug that affects 60% of Android devices.
A lot of things change when a company is acquired by another, and it is currently unknown how and if Blackberry would continue to exist, should it be bought by Samsung. If Blackberry devices will keep being manufactured post-acquisition (I imagine that the POTUS Obama, the owner of a Blackberry smartphone himself, would frown otherwise), the staff of the Canadian company will keep their jobs. Hopefully, Samsung is interested in more than just getting the patents that would make its devices some of the most secure in the world.
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