Monday, March 17, 2003
RIM to Offer BlackBerry Connectivity for Microsoft Windows Powered Mobile Devices
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 01:58 PM
"Research In Motion (RIM) today announced plans to enable BlackBerry(TM) connectivity for mobile devices based on the Microsoft Windows Powered Pocket PC and Smartphone platforms. RIM will provide a solution to help mobile device manufacturers and mobile operators easily integrate BlackBerry email and data services into their Pocket PC and Smartphone products."
The article continues with this quote that made me go "Hmm...":
"RIM is committed to enhancing and extending the BlackBerry wireless platform with multi-device and multi-network support," said Jim Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. "We have worked closely with Microsoft for several years to ensure proper BlackBerry integration with Exchange and are pleased to now expand our relationship to provide BlackBerry connectivity to leading Smartphone and Pocket PC licensees such as HTC."
Now let's ponder that for a second - HTC is a hardware manufacturer, so if RIM is talking to HTC, it must be about something on a hardware level. Are they going to put a pager into their hardware? RIM Blackberry device are pagers on steroids - they do their jobs very well, but they're based on an outdated technology that should be supplanted by GPRS and other wireless technologies...but only if all the pieces are in place on the back-end side of things (Exchange, etc.).
I'm just speculating here, but if HTC slaps a pager receiver onto their ODM devices, what about the software side of things? Will Microsoft update their OS to include support for receiving short pager messages? Or is this just a bunch of PR smoke that is about software, and not hardware? What's your analysis of this?
The article continues with this quote that made me go "Hmm...":
"RIM is committed to enhancing and extending the BlackBerry wireless platform with multi-device and multi-network support," said Jim Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. "We have worked closely with Microsoft for several years to ensure proper BlackBerry integration with Exchange and are pleased to now expand our relationship to provide BlackBerry connectivity to leading Smartphone and Pocket PC licensees such as HTC."
Now let's ponder that for a second - HTC is a hardware manufacturer, so if RIM is talking to HTC, it must be about something on a hardware level. Are they going to put a pager into their hardware? RIM Blackberry device are pagers on steroids - they do their jobs very well, but they're based on an outdated technology that should be supplanted by GPRS and other wireless technologies...but only if all the pieces are in place on the back-end side of things (Exchange, etc.).
I'm just speculating here, but if HTC slaps a pager receiver onto their ODM devices, what about the software side of things? Will Microsoft update their OS to include support for receiving short pager messages? Or is this just a bunch of PR smoke that is about software, and not hardware? What's your analysis of this?
