RIM has this smart new idea. User on his Windows Mobile 6 device clicks on an icon, and out comes a Blackberry application suite. Whoa! Wait a minute. Isn’t Microsoft onto something similar? Yes, in fact they are – Hotmail gets Pushy on Windows Mobile. So while we have Microsoft encroaching onto RIM’s territory, RIM doesn’t want to hold back either. RIM’s value addition comes by enabling Windows Mobile users to connect to their BlackBerry Enterprise Server as well as BlackBerry Internet Service. Besides that they are talking about WinMOs ability to run third-party applications developed for the BlackBerry platform. While the push-email part of things sounds okay, I am not really sure about the 3rd part apps angle. How many “useful” apps do you really have that are Blackberry compatible except the ones from Google? Not many.
However, things can get interesting from the consumer side in case you plan to use Barablu( or Fring once it starts supporting Windows Mobile) to make free VoIP calls over your WiFi. Besides that, all the Google Mobile Apps would also show up on Windows Mobile. Apart from that defining a consumer use case would be tough especially when the end-user has to click on a small icon to bring up another full blown app. Would be too geeky for most of the users.
From the enterprise customer standpoint, I don’t think any company will be going out for an all out deployment of Blackberry on WinMo if they are already hooked to Windows Mobile. Only time they would be interested is when they have few outliers using Windows Mobile on a predominantly RIM install base.
Also details are somewhat fuzzy about the data plan pricing. Would users be paying more than the $45/month Blackberry data network charge? Will wait for AT&T and RIM to give a clear message on that.
April 24, 2007 at 12:50 am |
[...] It might be true that Rim slowly expanding its footprints beyond blackberry devices, but at least what they got now is one of the smartest ideas for blackberry, interesting move and a clear way of fighting back at the growing number of other push providers by rolling out a “virtual BlackBerry” service to Windows Mobile 6. [...]