3 Reasons BlackBerry Will Never Be Acquired

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First Benzinga detailed the
10 companies
that could acquire
BlackBerry LtdBBRY
. Now it's time to hear the reasons why other analysts doubt that BlackBerry will ever be acquired.

1. Smartphone Buyouts Don't Have The Best History

Throughout history, investors can point to multiple mergers that worked in virtually every industry -- except smartphone production. "Google bought Motorola and then Lenovo bought Motorola from Google," tech industry expert and analyst
Jeff Kagan
told Benzinga. "When Google made the buy, nobody really understood what they were doing and nobody saw success in the future. That held true. It wasn't successful."
Google IncGOOG
sold Motorola to
Lenovo Group Limited (ADR)LNVGY
roughly
two years
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after it acquired the handset maker. "Will Lenovo be successful with Motorola? I don't think so," Kagan added. "Lenovo is big in the computer business, recently in the smartphone business in other countries. It's possible that Lenovo could be successful with Motorola in some countries. It would probably be the United States."

Related Link: Intel-Altera Deal 'Makes Sense,' Intellectual Property Not 'Fairly Valued'

2. BlackBerry Has Yet To Crack The 'Apple/Android/Galaxy Juggernaut'

On its own, BlackBerry has been unable to penetrate the walls built by
Apple Inc.AAPL
, Google and its Android partners. Kagan isn't sure the walls would come down just because BlackBerry had a new owner. "The question is, can they crack the Apple/Android/Galaxy juggernaut that's got 80 or 90 percent of the market here? That's a really hard thing to do," he said. "BlackBerry -- if it was still successful, if it was still hot, if (when you said the name 'BlackBerry') it still had the same buzz it had five years ago -- it would have a much better chance of being a successful acquisition by a number of companies." Kagan said that it gets harder and harder for BlackBerry to turn things around with each passing year. "If anyone is buying them, thinking they could turn them around, I don't know who that would be," he concluded.

3. BlackBerry Managers Want To Stay Focused

Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry expects BlackBerry managers to focus on improving the company's core competency without any M&A distractions. "I think BlackBerry's focus just has to be on doing what they do right -- deep security, that's it," Chowdhry told Benzinga. "Only a few sectors in the industry need that: insurance, medical, federal. They won't be all things to all people. They'll be all things to a very small number of people." Chowdhry doesn't expect BlackBerry's hardware to be an important driver of growth. "Even if they sell two, three million units of hardware every year but sell software across the industry they'll be profitable," he said. "Their strength has always been deep security. BlackBerry should just keep narrowing its focus but go deeper into that." Disclosure:
At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.
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Posted In: NewsM&ATechAppleBlackberryGlobal Equities ResearchGoogleJeff KaganLenovoMotorolaTrip Chowdhry
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