Fact: BlackBerry are considering selling off the company in a Nokia-esque maneuver that could see them integrated into the fold of another tech giant. But who in their right minds would buy the once mighty company that has almost entirely fallen by the wayside? My answer is simple, I have reasons to back it up and if you’ve made it this far into the article then hopefully I can convince you that Samsung is the right answer to the question.

Reason 1 – Enterprise

Samsung pretty much owns the consumer smartphone space at the moment with the only competitor being Apple who have seen the lead it once had over the South Korean giant dwindle to nothing. The enterprise space on the other hand is more complicated. Samsung have introduced Knox, a product designed to take on BlackBerry’s BES servers for managing devices in a corporate network. It offers device and application security features as well as device management features similar to what BES offers. Samsung now has to spend time and money convincing CTOs that their solution is just as safe and secure and BES while offering the added features of a more robust consumer experience that Android brings to the table. For the relatively paltry price of BlackBerry’s entire company Samsung could own the corporate and consumer spaces integrating its devices into the fold and taking over the lucrative contracts that BlackBerry has with big organisations.

Reason 2 – BlackBerry 10

Samsung does not like Google. They don’t even mention the fact that the smartphones they make run Android anymore. In the last few years Samsung have tried Bada and more recently Tizen to see if there would be an option for moving away from Google’s OS. Likewise Google is fearful that Samsung controls too much of the Android marketshare and could become a problem by throwing their weight around. BlackBerry 10 sits in the unique position of being a closed OS with the ability to run Android applications meaning that Samsung could use it to develope phones that don’t rely on Google or any of its services but can still access the nearly 1 million apps that Android has available.

Reason 3 – Patents

Patents are big business in the mobile phone game just ask Apple and Samsung. A Wall Street Journal article last month quoted analysts from Scotiabank who, after a very conservative valuation of BlackBerry’s patent portfolio, arrived at a valuation of around $2.25 billion for the patents which added to the $2.8 billion in cash on hand at BlackBerry would give them a cool $5 billion in immediate value. BlackBerry’s entire market capitalisation is $5.7 billion giving Samsung the opportunity to pick up one of the largest patent portfolios in the industry for much less than it’s worth.

I have a bet with Ben and Brett from the last episode of the ZA Tech Show that the sale would be wrapped up before the end of the year but I’d like to hear what you think as well so leave me a comment below.