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Amazon (AMZN) Approaches RIM About Buyout? How About Nokia And Micrososft?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Update:

The Wall Street Journal reports that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MFST) may also have consider a join bid.

The rumors that a company would offer to buy Canadian smartphone pioneer Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) have been circulating for months. It has progressively lost market share to Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android powered devices.

The potential suitor, it turns out, is one few expected. Reuters reports that Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) had interest in a transaction, but it may have fallen.

The news makes odd sense. Amazon has begun to stake out territory which sets it in direct competition with Apple and Google. Amazon.com has entered the tablet PC industry with the Kindle Fire–a direct rival to the iPad 2. Amazon has also created a streaming IP video service to compete with Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and Apple TV.

Amazon has no logical way to compete with Android or the iPhone if it cannot buy both a hardware and original OS platform of its own. RIM has both, and 75 million subscribers it has built over the years. What RIM does not have is a compelling product and a ready marketing platform like Amazon.com, the world’s largest e-commerce site.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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