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Thorsten Heins, CEO of BlackBerry, floated the idea of selling its manufacturing arm in an interview with Die Welt. It also floated the possibility of licensing its operating system.
Then Lenovo made a public announcement floating the possibility of acquiring BlackBerry to see how governments would respond. One Canadian government official said he would prefer that RIM grow "organically," which means he doesn't approve.
RIM sells a lot to the U.S. and Canadian government, so any purchase would get a lot of scrutiny. The Economist had a cover story about Huaweirecently. There is a lot of concern about Huawei, another seller of cell phones, being the front man for the Chinese military, and that it could rack up significant intelligence if the software can be jiggered to its advantage. Same would go for Lenovo with BlackBerry 10.
BlackBerry 10
BlackBerry (BBRY) had a clear advantage when you could read emails on the phones when other phones had no email access, but has had problems ever since iPhone and Android phones made their appearance.