Microsoft and Nokia announced a deal today where Nokia would functionally sell its mobile phone division to Microsoft and license the related intellectual property for a total cost of about 5 billion Euro.
The implications for Blackberry is that one potential strategic suitor (Microsoft) is probably gone. Just from a systems integration perspective it would take forever to fuse together technology from Nokia and Blackberry to make any sort of merge feasible.
The other data point is that 5 billion Euro gives a valuation benchmark for equivalent technology. Although the analogy is very loose, it does give some benchmark for Blackberry’s valuation – also noting that Nokia’s revenues that are being sold away consisted of about 15 billion Euro a year.
All in all, I am somewhat surprised that Blackberry is trading higher today.