Amazon 'considered bid for BlackBerry maker RIM'

Research In Motion, the struggling maker of BlackBerry smartphones, fended off the attention of online retail giant Amazon and others to sort out its problems alone, it has emerged.

Amazon hired an investment bank in the summer to review options for a potential merger with RIM, but stopped short of making a formal offer, sources have told Reuters.

A separate report in the Wall Street Journal has claimed that Nokia and Microsoft also considered a joint bid for RIM as part of their renewed collaboration agreement around the Windows Phone operating system.

But Reuters says that RIM's board wants co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie to concentrate on turning around the business and making better use of its assets, including the hugely popular BlackBerry Messenger service.

RIM's market value has slumped 77% this year to around $6.8bn (£4.3bn) following a series of problems, including weak sales of the BlackBerry Playbook tablet, a global service blackout in October and the recent delay of the new smartphones running BlackBerry 10.

RIM shareholder Jaguar Financial Corp has called for a sale of the firm, either as a whole or in separate parts.

The sources said that RIM could look to strike technology licensing deals, such as offering BlackBerry 10 to other companies to boost revenue, but an outright sale or joint venture deal is not currently on the agenda.

"Selling the company or an economic joint venture is probably not in the cards right now," said an unnamed source.

"Until you stabilise the platform, people are going to be very nervous about spending $10 billion or more."

RIM and Amazon declined to comment on the report.

Despite a merger or sale seemingly being ruled out, Reuters claims that Amazon and RIM are in negotiations over future commercial partnerships, similar to the deal that resulted in Amazon's music catalogue being made available to some BlackBerry users last year.

Ever since it launched the popular Kindle e-reader, Amazon has been making moves further into the technology hardware business, including the recent launch of the Kindle Fire tablet computer in the US.

Last month, CitiGroup claimed that Amazon was preparing to launch its first smartphone in late 2012, and it's not inconceivable that the firm could look to licence RIM's QNX operating system that will launch with next-generation BlackBerry 10 phones next year.

RIM is pinning its hopes on BlackBerry 10 to help the firm claw back market share from Google's Android, particularly after the US search firm snapped up smartphone maker Motorola Mobility in a $12.5 billion deal earlier in the year.