A few potential bidders for Blackberry, including some private equity firms, are now looking to deal with BlackBerry Ltd. Many are suggesting that market interest is tepid at best with buyers seeking to purchase parts of the Canadian smartphone manufacturer instead the whole firm. This was confirmed by several sources familiar with the situation.

Many of the interested hedge fund firms are interested in the Blackberry operating system and patents on its keyboard according to two of the anonymous sources. One of the possibilities though is that a Canadian pension fund would be teaming up with an investor to purchase Blackberry as a whole at a current bargain worth of USD5 billion.

The largest shareholder in Blackberry, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd had already approached several Canadian investment and pension funds about doing a deal to take Blackberry private. This was reported on by Reuters last week, where Fairfax CEO Prem Watsa left the smartphone maker's board to avoid possible conflicts of interest over its 10% shareholdings in the company and its bid to buy it.

For its part, Blackberry had declined to make any comment on the matter.