The Real Reason Apple Needs BlackBerry

Wall Street is still enamored with the possibility that Apple Inc. AAPL will acquire BlackBerry Ltd BBRY. It is only a rumor, but many analysts were quick to weigh in on the matter. "I think the play with BlackBerry is a partnership play, not at all an acquisition," Global Equities Research analyst Chowdhry told Benzinga. "Apple will welcome BlackBerry as an App Store partner. They can publish their security software on App Store and people can download it -- no different from what [other companies] have done." Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, had another theory. He believes that Apple could end up acquiring BlackBerry -- or at least consider it -- if the world's largest governments asked the iPhone maker to step in. "The one way this deal might work is if the US governments [and others] basically want Apple to buy them because they're worried that BlackBerry, effectively, won't be around in its current form," Udall told Benzinga. Cody Willard, chairman of Scutify (a financial social network) and Futr (a futuristic messaging app), told Benzinga that these and other reasons are secondary. "The main reason would be access to car dashboards," said Willard.

Related Link: 3 Reasons BlackBerry Will Never Be Acquired

In-Car Dominance

While many analysts scoffed at a possible merger, Willard said he would take the 'why not?' angle on this rumor. "Why not acquire BlackBerry?" he asked. "It would cost $5 billion. We're talking less than 1 to 1.5 percent of Apple's market cap to take out BlackBerry and acquire all their intellectual property and platforms and access to the cars." Willard said that BlackBerry "is still very dominant in owning the platform that most car dashboards use." "It would give Apple an immediate in," he added. "Or you use six or seven percent of your cash balance and you would acquire access to every major car manufacturer's dashboard." Apple has been meeting with a number of key automakers, but no new deals have been announced. "Meeting with them is one thing," said Willard. "Apple is trying to break into this market. [Acquiring BlackBerry] would fast-forward that effort two years." If Apple chooses to go in another direction, Willard speculated that Google's Android operating system will "end up dominating the car dashboard five years from today." "It's free, it's open," he explained. "The car manufacturers would retain most of the control rather than ceding that to the operating system owner, which is what would happen if you put Apple in your car dashboard." Without BlackBerry, Willard said that Apple will have to "spend the next two years getting deals done with the major car manufacturers." Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.