John Chen, BlackBerry's current CEO, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 2010.
IMAGE: RICHARD DREW/ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY SETH FIEGERMAN2 HOURS AGO
BlackBerry's CEO has a message for Facebook or any other company looking to spend $19 billion on a mobile messaging app: He would take that deal for its BBM messaging service.
"I work for the shareholder," John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, said in an interview with CNBC from Mobile World Congress on Tuesday. "If somebody comes to me with $19 billion, I would definitely sell it. I would recommend to the board to take it."
Chen reiterated his willingness to sell off BBM for the right price in a separate interview Tuesday with Bloomberg, but added, "it is a bit too early to think about getting our $19 billion.”
Facebook announced last week that it had agreed to acquire WhatsApp, the world's most popular mobile messaging service, for $16 billion in stock and cash, with another $3 billion in restricted stock units thrown in for employee retention.
The huge sum shocked many inside and outside the tech industry, and reignited investor interest in other mobile messaging apps, including BBM. BlackBerry stock jumped 4% after the WhatsApp deal was announced.
BBM has long been a popular feature among BlackBerry users. In late October, the company released a BBM app for iPhone and Android phones, which was quickly downloaded millions of times, suggesting broader demand for the service.
That said, BBM is significantly smaller than WhatsApp and other competitors. Chen says BBM has about 85 million monthly active users; WhatsApp has 465 million.
It's certainly not hard to see why Chen would be interested in taking such an offer: $19 billion is more than three times BlackBerry's current market cap.
Story from mashable.com
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