Microsoft and RIM together would be great for the iPhone and Nexus One

Although I have a BlackBerry, I’m liking it less and less everyday. Oh sure it’s fine as a phone. Yeah, sending email and texts on the BlackBerry is nice. Now, reading email on my Berry isn’t so hot. Checking things online through the browser, it’s so painful that I try to avoid it if at all possible. Now if Microsoft were to buy RIM, I think that would be just awesome. Fantastic.

For the iPhone, the Android platform, and Google’s Nexus One.

I can’t think of a better way to push a once great mobile device off a cliff than to tie it to Microsoft. Here is a device that owned email and the web on the go. Then a sleek device came out of Cupertino and ta da! our whole view of what a smartphone should be changed. I said back when the iPhone first came out almost three years ago that the iPhone would change everything and now most smartphones have touchscreens. RIM’s answer to the iPhone was the Storm (version 1) and that was just awful. I really, really wanted to like it, but couldn’t. I haven’t played with a Storm 2, but I’m not really holding out much hope there. I’ve played with iPhones and HTC Android-based phones and they are great devices. Everything that I’d want in my small, mobile communications device (just saying “phone” or even “smartphone” doesn’t seem to cover it well enough) are in those devices.

The eWeek article I saw about renewed Microsoft-RIM buyouts focus on the bad financial sense it would make:

Arguments for a possible acquisition, in McKechnie’s opinion, include RIM’s “dominant position in the enterprise, which MSFT could [make use of] to [improve] its Exchange business and add up to [about] $5 billion in recurring revenue should it reach 100 million subscribers.” Such an acquisition would strengthen Microsoft’s ability to compete for mobile customers against Google and Apple. However, McKechnie added, “We think RIMM would try and block a deal and that an acquisition would likely have to be hostile for it to occur.” In addition, “RIMM’s OS could be difficult to port over to a full Windows environment, thus proving a weaker ‘end game’ for Microsoft.” A deal with RIM could also eclipse any previous Microsoft acquisition in terms of cost, which could prove prohibitive.
link: Microsoft Acquiring RIM May Be Bad Idea, Says Analyst – Windows from eWeek

I think the financial cost aside—all Microsoft would have to do is sell Office site licenses to a couple companies and the U.S. government and they’d be set—it’s the hitching yourself to a once great device that has just lost its way is just bad policy. Microsoft needs innovation now more than anything. Yeah I know they are a huge behemoth, but if they don’t get on the stick soon they are going to be an also-ran even in the OS market. As far as email and office apps go, I think Office is slowly being edged out (too slowly for my tastes, but what can you do).

RIM won’t save their mobile devision. Windows Mobile hasn’t ever really ever taken off like it was hoped to, clearly if MSFT picked up RIM Windows Mobile would be on the fast-track to being shelved. I don’t think the BlackBerry OS would do much to help.

Well I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

And wait until my contract is up.

Cause my next phone…probably isn’t going to be a BlackBerry.

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