BlackBerry’s dark cloud
With BlackBerry’s edge over competitors being its ability to have e-mail “pushed” from your inbox to your mobile phone without you having to actively download – or “pull” – it from the network, news that Microsoft has introduced this push functionality in the latest version of its exchange server may pose a threat to the position it currently holds in the market.
Dubbed the ‘BlackBerry Killer’ by online news firm Mobile Pipeline , the Windows Mobile 5.0 update will “support direct wireless connections between mobile devices and the Microsoft Exchange Server, without additional server software,” says Microsoft. It says users will be able to remotely look up contact information stored on the server, and that this would enable third-party software vendors to create applications which can access that information.
The update will enable transfer of calendars, contacts, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, eliminating the need for “middleware” which links the e-mail to a mobile device (like BlackBerry handsets and servers). According to Computerworld , the updates will let systems administrators treat Windows-based mobile devices just as they would computers and laptops.
In addition to the competitive onslaught from Microsoft, RIM has to deal with the crumbling of a $450-m patent claim settlement with Virginia, USA-based NTP. Business Week Online reports that NTP owns a group of patents which it says the BlackBerry devices infringe on. “The two companies can’t agree that the settlement would cover all future payment obligations to NTP,” it says. Last week, RIM said NTP refused to honour its obligations and complete final documents for the settlement. It asked an appellate court last Thursday to “stay a pending appeal and send litigation between the companies to a lower court to enforce the settlement”, says Business Week.
The New York Times this week reported that unlisted NTP planned to “invoke an injunction banning sales of BlackBerries and their e-mail service throughout the United States” if the settlement cannot be revived. The injunction had been put on hold during RIM’s appeal.
The newspaper said NTP was a “long way away in the legal process” from invoking the injunction; Donald Stout, an intellectual property lawyer who co-founded NTP, rejected suggestions that NTP was bluffing about invoking it.
RIM chairman and co-CEO James Balsillie told the New York Times that even if the injunction is enforced, users would have little to fear as RIM has been developing separate software and systems that its lawyers believe cannot be challenged by NTP.
Source: http://www.moneyweb.co.za
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