Ask HN: Who is going to buy RIM?

Why not Samsung? I would imagine having a portfolio of patents that they can use to keep Apple at bay would be worth 6-7 Billion. Plus, they could use the enterprise advantage that Blackberry has to further dominate their Android position.

The only remaining viable part of BlackBerry (as RIM is known now) is their BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) service, which is like WhatsApp, but came out a decade ago. The user base is still very large (60m worldwide), so the platform could valuable as a standalone offering or as part of another mobile services company.

The patent portfolio will likely go to the highest bidder, independent of any company assets. No one needs their devices or the OS. Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Samsung are all candidates, or it may go to a consortium of some/all, as has happened in the past with the sale of Nortel's portfolio.

I don't think Google has any pressing need to buy a 2nd struggling manufacturer.

I would guess Amazon, Facebook, or maybe a big Chinese corporation.

Fairfax supposedly is working on a deal for 4.7b but they are worried they won't be able to acquire the necessary financing to make it happen.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/fairfax-st...

It's has no scence for a cellphone company to buy it, the company is going to fail anywhere, the most reasonable opsibility is for some non-competitor organization , I bet for canonical so they can make their phones with ubuntu..

Why buy it? Looks like their customer base is heading for something close to 0 within a few years.

RIM? That doesn't exist anymore. They are called "BlackBerry" these days[0].

[0] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-30/rim-changes-company...