Research In Motion has dropped its bid for digital encryption company Certicom after an Ontario court ruled the handset manufacturer breached a non-disclosure agreement with Certicom and used private information in its bid.
Certicom owns a sizeable patent portfolio related to elliptic curve cryptography which is used to encrypt and decrypt information sent across insecure networks. RIM currently licenses the technology for use in its Blackberry smartphones and likely wanted to buy the company in order to expand its own mobile enterprise portfolio or prevent another company from stepping into its enterprise smartphone territory. One of the main reasons business users have a tendency towards Blackberry use is the high level of security the devices provide.
The dropped bid may be a good thing for Certicom though. IBM, Microsoft, Sony, Qualcomm, and EMC are all potential bidders. But most analysts agree that RIM will eventually acquire the company, though at a higher price than the $1.50 Canadian/US$1.18 offered in this deal, the equivalent of $66 million.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Canaccord Adams’ Dushan Batrovic said in a note Tuesday that he believes Certicom will ultimately end up being acquired by RIM in a friendly offer in the C$2-C$3 range. He said he sees Certicom bringing about C$1.80 a share in tangible value for RIM, consisting of about 97 Canadian cents a share in cash and 80 Canadian cents in tax losses.
via wsj
(Image Credit: vaXzine)
