[caption id="attachment_63538" align="aligncenter" width="439"] BlackBerry Takeover Bid Will Buy Canadian Company Time[/caption]Blackberry Announces Sale to a Financial Consortium

Blackberry, the once vaunted and unequivocal gold standard in corporate smartphones, has announced its sale to the financial consortium Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. Their buyer already has a 10% stake in the company and will purchase the remaining 90% of the company's shares at $9 USD. The deal is said to be worth $4.7 billion. Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited will turn the cell phone maker into a private company.

What happened? It was only this past spring when Blackberry's CEO proudly announced the forth coming demise of tablet PCs which he said would occur within five years. He also boasted that during that same time frame, Blackberry would become the number smartphone company. He made these pronouncements on the strength of the new Z10 phone and the soon to be released Q10. Well, it's a lot easier to talk success than it is to achieve it.

The new line of phones sold 3.7 million units this past quarter and the Waterloo, Ontario based company has taken a nearly $1 billion loss due to unsold inventory of the phones.

Now, compare that sales performance to their rival Apple. The iPhone 5 sold in excess of nine million units within 72 hours of going on sale.

Iain Grant of technology research and strategy firm SeaBoard Groupsaid said going private is the the only way to save the struggling company.

"Taking it private [is] the only way to save anything," said Grant in an interview with CBC.

"Otherwise just continue circling the drain — every quarter losses continue, confidence evaporates, no magic [equals] no value," Grant said in an email to CBC News.

The Fairfax consortium has six weeks to carry out its due diligence, during which time BlackBerry can solicit or negotiate other bids.

On Tuesday, BlackBerry shares were unchanged.

On The web:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/blackberry-to-be-sold-to-group-led-by-fairfax-financial-1.1864922