BlackBerry Asked Facebook To Buy The Company And Facebook Said No
AP
BlackBerry executives met with people at Facebook last week to see if Facebook had any interest in buying the troubled smartphone company, the Wall Street Journal reports.It's "unclear" if Facebook has any interest. Our guess would be that it does not.
Facebook has been trying to crack the mobile market with its own phone/mobile operating system. BlackBerry could help with that, but Facebook's software is built for Android, not BlackBerry. We're not sure how that would work.
Earlier this year, Facebook released an app for Android phones called Facebook Home. Facebook Home replaces your regular Android home screen with a slide show of Facebook photos and status updates from your friends. The app also debuted on the HTC First, which had pretty bad reviews and poor sales, according to many reports.
BlackBerry has been trying to sell itself for a long time now. It agreed to a deal with Fairfax Financial that would take BlackBerry private at a $4.7 billion valuation.
The WSJ notes that due diligence for that deal ends soon, and it seems that BlackBerry is trying to find another taker. Our cynical read on this Facebook news is that BlackBerry met with Facebook, then someone at BlackBerry leaked the news in an attempt to stir any other bidders out there.