The Waterloo, Ont.-based BlackBerry maker made its all-cash offer on Wednesday for Mississauga, Ont.-based Certicom after reporting lower-than-expected third-quarter earnings. Certicom's board rejected the bid and in a statement said that other parties were also looking at acquiring the firm. RIM's own public statements revealed the company has been trying unsuccessfully to negotiate with Certicom since February of last year.

Certicom is best known for its Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which is used by Motorola, IBM and a number of other customers to protect information using a complex mathematical approach to IT security.

Ronald Gruia, an analyst with Toronto-based Frost & Sullivan, said Certicom would represent a highly valuable piece of intellectual property for RIM and its BlackBerry product line.

"I think that this takeover news is interesting. (Certicom) has integration with a whole bunch of different handset vendors. I think this will ultimately strengthen the (BlackBerry) portfolio," he said. "They couldn't reach an agreement and I think it's a decent premium. They have been around for quite some time."

A big part of RIM's business is focusing on government and meeting the various levels of security required by the public sector, said Ryan Reith, an analyst with IDC based in Boston. In the U.S., for example, the government requires technology vendors to address five different levels of encryption, and so far, RIM has accomplished three of them.