Is BlackBerry's $150 Million WatchDox Acquisition Money Well Spent?

BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ: BBRY) announced this week that it has acquired WatchDox, a data security company, to bolster mobile content security.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. According to TechCrunch, BlackBerry might have paid as much as $150 million.

Was this money well spent? Some analysts believe that security is the future of BlackBerry, arguing that the company could double if it captures the right market.

Regardless, industry experts aren't sure that WatchDox will provide significant value to BlackBerry.

"The last thing that BlackBerry has got to lean on now is being a slightly more secure platform than Apple, which is slightly more secure than Android," Cody Willard, chairman of Scutify (a financial social network), told Benzinga. "There's no marketing opportunity or sales opportunity to convince someone to use BlackBerry because they bought some security technology underneath it."

Related Link: 3 Reasons BlackBerry Will Never Be Acquired

Opportunity To Grow

Tech industry expert and analyst Jeff Kagan said that, if nothing else, the acquisition is a "good idea."

"BlackBerry is basically two companies," Kagan told Benzinga. "It's a company that makes handsets and it's a company that makes an [operating system]. They can work with other handset makers to implement [that]."

Kagan noted that when most people think of BlackBerry, they think of an actual device.

"They've been struggling," he said. "It's not a company that has to struggle forever. If they can just figure it out, how to start growing again, but that's something they've really not been able to do. They may not be dropping any more, they might be stabilized, but they're not really growing."

This acquisition "is an opportunity for them to grow," Kagan added.

Where's The Value?

BlackBerry might find it difficult to profit from its latest acquisition.

"The problem is, if they charge for added security, then their selling point to anybody who's not on BlackBerry is moot," said Willard. "Nobody wants to go sign up for BlackBerry and have to pay extra for good security. They have to use this as sort of a value add to the existing product, if anything at all."

Willard thinks BlackBerry is betting on the assumptions that government agencies will use BlackBerry because it's "theoretically more secure."

"I don't really believe that and I don't know that anybody cares," Willard added. "If anybody wants [to hack] into your stuff, they'll get into your stuff -- on BlackBerry or iPhone anyway."

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.