Samsung to Be Interested in Buying Parts of RIM, Licensing BlackBerry

South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung is reportedly interested in purchasing parts of Canadian smartphone designer Research In Motion.

The maker of BlackBerry has been long rumored to plan selling its assets due to falling stocks and slimmer market share.

Nothing has been officially confirmed for the time being, but the company is said to have already kicked off the process, through hiring investment bank Goldman Sachs to seek strategic options.

We heard that Microsoft and Amazon were among the possible bidders, and it seems that there are even more companies interested in the acquisition of RIM.

Samsung is one of these companies, and rumors emerged that it would be planning the purchase of parts of RIM.

The initial hearsay suggested that Samsung was actually planning to overtake RIM, but the South Korean handset vendor stepped up and denied these allegations.

What the company did not say was whether it had any plans to acquire parts of RIM or to license its BlackBerry operating system.

To prevent its platform from losing even more market share, RIM was expected to announce intentions to allow other handset vendor to license it.

All is supposed to start as soon as the new BlackBerry OS 10 software was released, yet no formal confirmation on the matter has emerged so far.

Samsung already offers handsets running under Android, its own platform bada, and Windows Phone. The availability of BlackBerry-powered devices will certainly help it gain some more share on the smartphone market.

If so, Samsung would also be able to better differentiate itself in a market currently flooded with Android-based smartphones.

According to BGR, RIM and Samsung are currently negotiating either the purchase of assets or the licensing of software. A source close with the matter confirmed this.

RIM is also said to ask for more than $10 billion for the entire company, or around $22.90 and $28.60 per share. However, some analysts suggest that RIM would actually worth around $8.5 billion.