RIM Stocks Rises on Rumors of Buyout by Samsung

Research in Motion, makers of Blackberry smartphones, saw a sharp jump in its stock price on Tuesday as rumors of a potential buyout by Samsung surfaced. The stock rose 8.9 percent, up to $17.61 a share as of 1:30 ET.

RIM's stock fell 75 percent last year, and, an acquisition by Samsung, according to Bloomberg, would give Samsung a leg up on its main competition, Apple. Samsung currently manufactures phones with Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems, and adding RIM's Blackberry platform would give Samsung the ability to make phones with three of the largest operating systems.

This has been speculated before, and it does have logic to it in the sense that Samsung has no viable high-end smartphone operating system, and increasingly reselling Android or Windows Phone is being viewed as a commodity business, Tavis McCourt, a Morgan Keegan and Co. analyst in Nashville, told Bloomberg News.

Blackberry's market share has been dropping, despite new models sporting touchscreens and an upgrading browser. According to Bloomberg, the company's share of U.S. mobile-phone subscribers in the three months through November dropped to 6.5 percent from 7.1 percent in the previous quarter. Samsung, based in South Korea, increased to 25.6 percent from 25.3 percent, and Apple gained 1.4 percentage points to 11.2 percent.

Even if a deal is not reached, the possibility of a licensing agreement between Samsung and RIM still remains.