RIM's Unified Theory

Unstrung writes about Research In Motion's efforts to "reassure its existing enterprise customers and to fend off the growing threat from devices running Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0," after its long drawn out patent battles.

Since settling its lawsuit with NTP on March 3, RIM has announced "a partnership with Google for instant messaging via Google Talk," made "an aggressive marketing effort for its new line of Blackberry 8700 devices," and aquired Ascendent Systems , a San Jose-based provider of mobile VOIP systems."

According to the article, the "Ascendent acquisition is squarely aimed at RIM's long-range goal: taking Blackberry beyond enterprise mobile email and making it the single mobile device for unified messaging and business applications."

Ellen Daley at Forrester said, "Before I met with [RIM], I thought Microsoft would win the applications battle just because they're Microsoft. But I am continually impressed by RIM's focus on the engineering side, on building seamless technology and making it all work for the user. They really do have the best technology."

On the subject of getting applications from third-party vendors to run on Blackberries or Windows Mobile devices, Daley said, "It's not all about pushing Microsoft applications out to mobile devices, but other apps as well. I haven't seen them be agnostic like RIM can afford to be -- and after all, the interoperability idea is not exactly in Microsoft's DNA."

So RIM has engineering and technology going for it. Now it just needs to improve on its customer skills, and realize the IT department is the customer, and not necessary the "crackberry" end users....