RIM – Canada’s Next Crown Corporation?
by admin on Nov.12, 2011, under ECONOMY, POLITICS, RANDOM THOUGHTS
With RIM’s stock continuing to tank – the blackberry maker continues to be a lightening rod for business discussion and speculation.
What has been missing from the chatter is what makes RIM different from most businesses that are takeover targets.
Governments and corporations around the world continue to use blackberry as their mobile devices. The amount of sensitive data that transmits through RIM is enormous. The high level encryption and security standards continue to be RIM’s competitive advantage in holding its enterprise customer base – recent service interruptions notwithstanding .
If another company or individual tried to acquire RIM, the government of Canada would be under immense pressure to scrutinise the deal in order to ensure international security risks were addressed.
Whether a deal could or would ever be approved is mired in the certainty of uncertainty. This may be why no takeover attempt has been made to this point – even though it seems ripe for the taking. No company is going to bother making such a move if it knows it has no hope of getting government approval.
If anyone was looking to takeover or control RIM it could be the Canadian government. Yes, I know that may sound absurd, but if a state government such as the U.S. were concerned that RIM was being managed in such a way that could potentially lead to sensitive data transfers being compromised, it could push Canadian authorities to heavily regulate or even control RIM.
This of course is predicated upon RIM
remaining the gold standard for secure mobile communication. If this is compromised or duplicated then all bets are off. The talk and rumours surrounding RIM will disappear – along likely with RIM itself.
So what does the future of RIM hold. I suspect it will remain in its current form for quite sometime as long as its leading position in data encryption remains secure. There seems to be no marketing geniuses over there so it all comes down to the product.
It is for this reason I would be reluctant to throw Co-Ceo Mike Lazzaridis aside in any management shake up. He is the man that holds all the keys in keeping RIM secure and possibly coming up with anything new.
