RIM signs BT to sell Blackberry
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BT is to offer Research in Motion&#39;s Blackberry mobile email and personal information management system, the UK telco said today.
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Research In Motion has obtained the approvals to begin selling BlackBerry handsets in China.
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(InfoWorld) - Rumors that Microsoft may purchase BlackBerry maker Research in Motion are likely just that because of RIM's high price tag, though there would be benefits for both parties if a deal were struck, analysts said Friday. Michelle Warren, a senior analyst for Info-Tech Research Group in Toronto, sent out a note Thursday on industry speculation that Microsoft is in discussions with RIM, observing that the deal would give Microsoft ammunition to compete in the consumer device market against Apple. It also would position them well to fight any wireless strategy from Google, which has been buying up dark cable networks and is expected to make a big move in wireless communications in the next year or two, she said. "I think this makes sense basically because Microsoft has to do something different to order increase market share in the overall IT market," Warren said in an interview Friday. "It has to do something disruptive and eye-catching, and this speaks to its marketing positioning and future expansion plans." Microsoft has achieved a fair amount of success with its latest mobile OS, Windows Mobile 6, and has identified the mobile device space as an important one for the company's growth and revenue diversification going forward. Buying RIM would counter its current weakness in developing hardware for its mobile OS, Warren said. RIM would gain Microsoft's brand power and also engineering expertise for one of BlackBerry's competitive differentiators. Business users find a BlackBerry's ability to communicate with Microsoft Exchange Server for mobile e-mail an attractive feature. Microsoft also makes this option available in Windows Mobile. Synching up with Microsoft would allow the company to enhance this capability faster and more efficiently, Warren said. Neither Microsoft nor RIM would comment Friday on the possibility of a deal. Despite the advantages of a Microsoft-RIM merger, the deal just doesn't make economic sense, other analysts said Friday. To them, it's not even a remote possibility Microsoft would pony up more than the $47 billion in market cap RIM currently has to buy the vendor. "I just don't see it," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. He acknowledged he was surprised byÂ Microsoft's purchase of digital advertising services firm aQuantiveÂ for $6 billion and so also could be mistaken in the case of RIM. However, it isn't likely that Microsoft, for which the aQuantive deal was its largest to date, would shell out much more than a few billion to purchase a company. "A RIM deal would be larger by an order of magnitude," Rosoff said. "I just don't see Microsoft making that size of acquisition." He added that some kind of strategic alliance between the two, which currently compete head to head in the mobile OS space, would be more likely. "A multiyear partnership agreement, where some money might change hands but we'd never know how much," would make more sense, Rosoff said. Roger Kay, president of market intelligence firm Endpoint Technologies Associates, agreed that Microsoft likely won't make a purchase that large. He also noted that although Microsoft has become increasingly "more comfortable" with developing consumer hardware -- with products like the Xbox 360 gaming console and Zune digital media player on the market -- there could be thorny competitive issues with mobile device makers that license Windows Mobile if Microsoft begin making hardware for this market.
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RIM announces a series of updates for its BlackBerry platform.
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Research in Motion wins approval to sell its Blackberry handheld e-mail device in China.
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BT Group Plc, the UK&#39;s largest phone operator, agreed to sell its stake in Eutelsat SA for 363 million pounds ($685 million) in cash, marking the company&#39;s exit from the satellite operating business.
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BT Group PLC said Monday it is buying U.S.-based Infonet Services Corp., in a deal that values the company at $965 million.
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Jim Balsillie, the co-chief executive of the Canadian-based company behind the wireless BlackBerry messaging device, has signed an agreement to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team announced on Thursday.
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Jim Balsillie, a Canadian business executive whose company makes the BlackBerry wireless messaging device, has signed a purchase agreement to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team announced Thursday.
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Research In Motion Ltd. expects to start selling a BlackBerry with both cellular and Wi-Fi wireless capabilities, the company&#39;s CEO said Thursday.
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Cingular Wireless, the largest  U.S. mobile phone service carrier, said on Wednesday it will  start selling Research in Motion's   new  BlackBerry "Pearl" handheld device on Friday as both companies  seek to boost sales during the holiday season.
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LONDON - BT Group, the British telecommunications company, said Monday that it&#39;s buying US-based Infonet Services in a deal that values Infonet at $965 million.
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Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) (RIM) is offering a peek at the company's latest wireless BlackBerry, a handheld that operates on Wi-Fi (802.11b) networks and supports both voice over Internet communications and data connectivity on local area networks.
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Company strikes deal with BT Wholesale to sell broadband Net service in Britain, bundle it with mobile offerings.
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BT Group has sold its stake in the satellite operator Eutelsat as part of a growing focus on its core business. The sale marks BT&#39;s exit from the satellite business and ends a 25-year-old tie with the operator which it helped co-found in the late 1970s.
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Research in Motion (RIM)&#160;is stepping up its game against Microsoft, Nokia, and other rivals with several enhancements to its BlackBerry software that it will showcase at Lotusphere this week.The updates, coming in new BlackBerry devices and device and server software versions in the first half of this year, will strengthen the platform&#39;s core e-mail capability while adding new messaging, manageability, and security features.RIM pioneered enterprise handheld connectivity with the BlackBerry&#39;s push e-mail system and BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server). Competitors have since muscled in on this territory, while RIM has invested in software and devices to expand its appeal to the consumer market. With the new features, the company is looking toward a future in which almost all communication capabilities on the desktop are available on the road through a set of capabilities often called unified communications.Among key new capabilities are features that merge voice with instant messaging. Users who run IBM Lotus Sametime or Microsoft Live Communications Server will be able to click on an IM contact on the BlackBerry phone in order to call them or convert an ongoing IM session into a voice call. They will also be able to check whether their colleagues are going to be available before they send out meeting requests.Enhanced e-mail handling will include several new features. Users will be able to search for and retrieve messages on their enterprise e-mail servers that are no longer stored on their BlackBerries. Also, the devices will be able to render HTML and rich text e-mail messages, including font colors and styles, images, hyperlinks, and other elements. After downloading Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files, users will now be able to edit them on the BlackBerry, thanks to Documents to Go software from DataViz that is being integrated into the mobile platform.Even within e-mail encrypted with PGP or S/MIME, BlackBerry users will be able to view attachments, according to the company.RIM also has some good news for enterprises that want to more easily manage and lock down their employees&#39; devices. They will be able to drill down and define which applications on a BlackBerry can access its GPS functionality as well as enable or shut down specific Bluetooth profiles and set how long the device is &quot;discoverable&quot; using Bluetooth. The less time a phone is discoverable by other Bluetooth devices, the less chance an intruder has to hack it, although this method of breaking into a phone hasn&#39;t been widely exploited.A Web-based device management console is also coming, allowing users to control settings and install software from any Web-connected computer. In addition, administrators will now be able to update users&#39; devices over the air.To help third parties develop their own applications for the BlackBerry, RIM also announced the availability of some additional Java Micro Edition APIs. They include ones to support developing mobile Web services clients, software that uses MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), and a single application that works for multiple languages and regions.RIM expects to ship its BES version 4.1.5 software for IBM Lotus Domino and for Microsoft Exchange by the end of February. They will be free upgrades for customers with BES version 4.1.0 or later, while others can buy the upgrade for $999 or purchase a Technical Support Services contract. The price of the BES for new customers will remain at $3,999 per server with 20 user licenses included.Version 4.5 of the BlackBerry device software will be required to use many of the end-user features; it will be available in the first half of the year, depending on carrier. It will be a free download from RIM and carrier Web sites. The ability to edit Word and PowerPoint documents will come with version 4.5, but Excel editing capability will be in a later release, expected in the latter part of this year.
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Research In Motion Ltd. has won permission to sell its BlackBerry device in China after eight years of effort, the Globe and Mail newspaper said on Wednesday.