Research In Motion Limited (NASDAQ: RIMM) has joined Palm in the quest to innovate and then to allow the market to rapidly pass it by. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) are killing the former “Crackberry” namesake at its own game. Now businesses and independent business people are migrating away from the smartphone maker in droves. This you know by now. The strong stock market may be offering some strength for R-I-M, but the big catalyst today is a rumor that Carl Icahn is looking to get involved in this deeply bruised company.
Now that Icahn has fled his efforts in Clorox Corporation (NYSE: CLX) and jettisoned his Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE: LGF) efforts, Icahn has some spare time and some spare cash to slosh back into another activist effort.
There is no easy solution here, not even for Carl Icahn. R-I-M is Canadian outfit. Despite its massive sell-off this year, R-I-M still has a market value of $12 billion. Lions Gate is worth less than $1 billion and Clorox is worth nearly $9 billion. Moving up the food chain in size gets harder and harder to do.
If there is truth here, Mr. Icahn might want to consider the case where he got stuck in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO). He was not able to force a buyout there.
The rumor is that Carl Icahn has made an approach of some sort to the troubled company. He does have the success of Motorola to trump as a winning card, but R-I-M has such troubles that you wonder if anyone (even a new CEO) could make a real difference here.
The rumor could be a buyout, but more likely it would be a rumor to push the company into acting faster, with new leadership, and with a more aggressive nature. It could end up being a very painful situation to simply acquire a company when it is losing this much market share this rapidly.
RIM is up nearly 6% at $22.95.
JON C. OGG
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