Lenovo already made one high profile move in the smartphone space when it announced plans to acquire Motorola from Google earlier this year for US$2.91 billion. The deal has yet to close that it may be readying another big move. A rumour now suggests that the Chinese company could make an offer to acquire BlackBerry as early as later this week.
If the rumour sounds familiar, it’s because a similar story surfaced back in January 2013 when it was still known as Research In Motion and then again about a year ago. Last year, Lenovo had reportedly gone far enough to sign a confidentiality agreement that allowed it to go through BlackBerry’s books to decide whether to move forward or not. We later learned that a deal was “quickly and quietly killed” by the Canadian government over national security concerns.
According to Benzinga, Lenovo’s offer will come in at US$15 per share but it is prepared to go as high as US$18 per share to seal the deal. The move could be related to Lenovo’s announcement last week that it would launch a new company focused on smart devices. Lenovo could also be interested in the intellectual property and enterprise customers that BlackBerry has.
If Lenovo is to make another bid for BlackBerry, it remains to be seen if the Canadian government will allow the deal to go forward this time around.
Source : Benzinga