Rumours are once again swirling that Research in Motion is about to be snapped up. This time the buyer would be Microsoft. While Microsoft does have a fair amount of money sitting in its bank accounts, RIM would not be a cheap purchase. RIM is currently valued at US$46.8 billion (compared to Microsoft’s market capitalization of US$266.5 billion).
One interesting bit of speculation suggests that Microsoft could be eyeing this purchase in response to recent rumours that Google could be moving into the mobile phone operating system and hardware business.
While RIM stock shot up just over one percent on the rumours, many analysts suggest that the rumour might be no more than that. Maybe the next few days will tell us more…