Samsung looking to extend partnership with BlackBerry despite false acquisition rumors

While rumors that Samsung was in talks to acquire BlackBerry for as much as $7.5 billion ultimately proved to be untrue, the two smartphone makers remain interested in working with one another. “We want to work with BlackBerry and develop this partnership, not acquire the company,” J.K. Shin, head of Samsung’s mobile phone business, told The Wall Street Journal.

Samsung reached an agreement with BlackBerry in November in an effort to push its Knox security services and mobile devices to enterprise customers, and the South Korean handset maker is in separate talks with its struggling Canadian competitor about extending their cooperation together. For now, however, that does not include a full-out acquisition.

“Mr. Shin said an acquisition of BlackBerry would be counter to the company’s strategy,” claims the report. “Samsung has built its ambitions for the enterprise market around its own security platform called Knox. Samsung, the world’s largest maker of handsets, has invested heavily in Knox over the past few years, though it has struggled to gain traction with the platform and hasn’t yet announced any prominent clients for the service.”

It was rumored that Samsung was aiming to acquire BlackBerry to access the company’s extensive patent portfolio, but the company denied those claims and pointed towards the 110,000 patents that it has registered worldwide. Analysts believed that Samsung could have benefitted from BlackBerry’s 44,000 patents after lengthy litigation with Apple and other companies over the past five years.

Samsung did not elaborate on how it might extend its existing relationship with BlackBerry.