RIM go on the offensive.
Rating: RIM V Apple - Game is seriously (US) on.
I read a couple of interesting articles today in Electronista and both, for me, signal RIM’s intention to meet Apple head on and to make the BlackBerry, the ultimate platform. RIM have launched a venture capital pool called the BlackBerry Partners Fund to rival the iFund set up by Apple for the iPhone.
The BlackBerry Fund has a $150 million floating around, 50% more than the iFund. Both funds aim to help emerging young companies to bring their applications to market. According to RIM co-chief Jim Balsillie it was essential to do the fund as mobile devices have “evolved well beyond phone calls and simple messaging” Personally, I think this sends a signal to the wider investment, trading and cellphone industry, as well as offering much needed investment to creative idea development from software development companies.
The other piece that caught my eye, no its not about the BlackBerry Bold! (you can read that anywhere) was the announcement that Research in Motion (RIM) will enable Microsoft’s key Windows Live services, namely Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger on it’s smartphones. The end user will only have to sign in once to access both services while Hotmail will get RIM’s trademark “Push” allowing near as damn it real time delivery of email while Messenger will have multi chat and emoticon support just like other variants. These add to the BlackBerry’s ability to already run Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk make it a formidable messaging platform and allows you to keep in contact with your freinds/associates whatever messenger/talk application they prefer.
Whether or not this will be retrospectively added to other BlackBerry OS’s is still to be announced but as the BlackBerry Bold ships with a new OS, namely 4.6 my guess is they wont be, unless older devices can run a variant of the new OS.
It’s a bold move by RIM who do not have the consumer market Apple do to offer emerging companies investment and really does add RIM’s stake in the ground and show their intentions. Apple and RIM are constantly mentioned these days as having the best UI, a place Nokia used to dominate in the UK and Europe with the S60 handsets and the Series 40 before that. Nokia and Apple have key consumer positions here in the UK and Europe, perhaps RIM truly need a consumer/under 25’s device then they truly will have mobile devices for the whole family, in the US and outside of.
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