Microsoft and Amazon mull Rim deal

Things haven’t been going well at all well for Rim lately, with 2011 bringing forth something of a catalogue of disasters.

The company’s smartphone market share has seriously dwindled, its new PlayBook tablet fallen flat, a major service outage back in October caused considerable embarrassment, and the latest fiscal results were relatively poor.

The soured icing on a flat cake was the revelation that the new handset range featuring the BB10 hybrid OS (previously known as BBX) won’t be out until later in 2012. And Rim really needs it out there as soon as possible to fight back in the smartphone market.

So it’s perhaps no surprise, given the bad news and falling stock price, that tongues have started to wag regarding a takeover.

Word from the Wall Street Journal’s sources, which are as reliable as any, is that both Microsoft and Nokia were considering partnering on a bid to snap up Rim.

The move didn’t seem to get past mulling in the boardroom and some vague informal talks, but the fact that anything happened at all is an indicator that the prospect was seriously being considered.

Talks could potentially still be ongoing, as the WSJ isn’t sure of the exact situation currently.

Further rumours point to the fact that Amazon was also considering offering a merger with Rim, again with informal discussions taking place. How far these got isn’t known, although it seems Rim decided it would rather attempt to weather the current storm itself.

There’s definitely knocking at the acquisition door, though Rim might not be interested in answering just yet.

The company’s BB10 plans sliding doesn’t mean they’re dead in the water, although with a further couple of quarters of continued Android and iOS dominance – with the prospect of Windows Phone 7 stepping up a gear via Nokia – it might well look that way come mid-2012.

Although if the push with Windows Phone 7 fails to gain momentum over the next six months, perhaps Rim might be offering Nokia an alternate OS in BB10.

Other whispers indicate Rim has approached companies with a view to licensing out its BlackBerry operating system, which would be a radical switch for the company – and perhaps a move away from hardware?