Recent reports suggest that the Canadian government had stopped Lenovo's takeover of BlackBerry due to national security concerns.
The Canadian smartphone maker has lost a major chunk of its business to rivals such as Apple, Samsung, Nokia, HTC and more in the last decade. However, BlackBerry handsets are still supposed to have one of the best security features found in mobile devices.
BlackBerry has already launched a number of QWERTY and all-touch handsets in 2013 in a bid to turn the tide in the company's favor. However, the new handsets running on the company's latest operating system, the BlackBerry 10, failed to attract as many customers as the company had hoped.
Chinese smartphone maker Lenovo has a strong presence in China and nine other countries. The company ranked fourth in the global shipments for smartphones between July and September. Lenovo had recently revealed that it plans to expand to other global markets in the near term and as BlackBerry has a presence in key markets such as North America and Europe, it would have made sense for Lenovo to takeover BlackBerry.
However, Canada isn't keen on letting Lenovo buy BlackBerry. "We have been pretty consistent that the message is Canada is open to foreign investment and investment from China in particular but not at the cost of compromising national security," said a Canadian government official.
In 2012, the Canadian government restricted certain foreign investments on state-owned companies. Government officials also hinted that the move was mainly aimed at China.
Rumors have been doing the rounds that big companies like SAP, Cisco, Google are also interested in buying BlackBerry. However, BlackBerry has now indicated that it is not up for sale anymore as the company has acquired $1 billion in funding from investors, which will be used to make changes in the organization.
