RIM announces all-cash acquisition, takeover bid

Research In Motion, maker of the Blackberry, announced that it will acquire Chalk Media, a Vancouver company behind a technology that allows multimedia files such as video, audio and presentations to be pushed to Blackberry devices similarly to how e-mail is delivered.

The acquisition, which is expected to close by February, was priced at C$23.1 million, or C$ 0.142 per share.

Chalk is the developer behind Mobile Chalkboard, a secure application that allows "pushcasts" to be delivered to Blackberry users within an organization. (Video demo) The company had already been a RIM partner.

RIM announced yesterday that it had filed a formal take-over bid for Certicom, a security software firm based in Ontario, Canada. That takeover is also an all-cash bid of C$1.50 per share, a 76 percent premium over the closing price of Certicom shares on December 2, 2008, according to a RIM press release.