And you are here why?

Given that Nokia seems to be going nowhere pretty fast (cool new phones - yup.  nifty Windows Mobile - yup.  People caring - not so much), it was just a matter of time before they started going down the patent route, and I guess the first shoe just dropped.  per The Verge, Nokia just announced that it's suing HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic for patent infringement in the US and Germany. All told, there are 45 patent in the various lawsuits, covering what Nokia says are proprietary technologies — i.e., not industry standards. Specifically, Nokia's patents cover hardware features like antennas, radios, and power management, as well as software features like multitasking, navigation, app stores, retrieving email attachments on mobile, "conversational" message display, dynamic menus, and certain types of data encryption. The patents in question makes these cases slightly different than Nokia's now-settled litigation with Apple, which involved several standards-relate...

Theres a new Trend Micro (the security folks) study out ( which I can't get my hands on. Sigh .) which sez. that the BB 7 OS has "corporate grade security and manageability". Which, I believe, is just about enough to get you a cup of coffee, if you happen to have an extra $3.50 lying around that is. Seriously, who even cares about this stuff any more?  I mean, of course people care about security, but its not really the primary thing, is it? Pretty much everyone I know has an iPhone or an Android thingy.  The choice is never about which one is more secure, its pretty much a Mac vs. PC type of religious thing, with the PC replaced with Android. Sometimes, sometimes , they also haul around a company provided BB, which kinda, sorta, vaguely, gets used, but even thats pretty much fading.  I suspect a huge chunk of these are long-term contracts that the company has signed, which is almost certainly not a good sign for RIM. So, back to the study - this is the sa...

Sigh. The latest BB (the 9320) has been spotted in the wild , and, well, its pretty much identical to everything you've seen before. Oh innovation, where is thy sting? I'll let BGR do the honors... If you thought   RIM's decline   would inject a need to give its handsets a major makeover, think again. ... (It) shamelessly resembles just about   every member   of the   Curve   family. The purported 9320 is said to come sporting   OS 7.1   at its core, along with a 2.44-inch, 320 x 240 qVGA+ display, 512MB of RAM as well as a 3.2-megapixel rear shooter. Allegedly, the BlackBerry is also rocking a BBM button on its left spine, which should come in handy to those who love some Berry-specific instant messaging Pretty much sez. it all, right?  Actually, it doesn't, since Heins (CEO) seems to be convinced that Europe is going to save 'em, per an interview in BusinessWeek “In Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, BlackBerry is a ...

An absolutely fascinating read from The Verge, titled Research, no motion: How the BlackBerry CEOs lost an empire .  Its a comprehensive and extremely well documented history of RIM, going into quite gory detail about where they came from, and why they failed (in a word, Hubris). The key question is - of course - asked at the very end Michael Mace compares Thorsten Heins to two CEOs who did manage to turn around multi-billion dollar companies. "When you add up all those challenges, it's hard to say that RIM just needs to execute better," he says. "This feels more like a fundamental rethink, along the lines of what Jobs did when he returned to Apple or Lou Gerstner's remarkable transformation of IBM. Is Heins a Gerstner? And does he have enough support from the Board to make that sort of change? I guess we're going to find out." The article is brilliant - go read it...

Oh Ouch - Kayak just announced that they're not going to be doing any new development for the BlackBerry .  Which is particularly painful, since they've pretty much adopted a Mobile First approach - pretty much implying that they don't see Blackberry as a relevant platform. To pack the wounds with additional salt, they point out that back when Kayak started out, everybody there used BlackBerrys. Now - not so much.  .  Seriously - *Ouch*.

From the Blackberry blogs, comes this InfoGraphic  Words...truly...fail...me...  Seriously, I hope that this isn't part of Thorsten Heins' new "Saving RIM" strategy.  If it is, well, <gulp>.  I mean GoGo Girl - "Saving the day with a strategy, a smile or a spatula"?  Really? Like I said, <gulp>

VentureBeat beats up on Blackberry .  Their main argument is that Software beat out Hardware. Meanwhile, BlackBerry continued to kill it. And in this way, Nokia, the largest cellphone maker, did too on the low-end with its “dumb phones.” Until circa 2007, it was the Golden Age of Hardware. The two companies perfected the hardware’s sync with phone networks. Voice quality was good and reliable. All RIM had to do was continue to make more of these useful phones, lower the price, and take ownership of the mass market. As BlackBerry became more entrenched, RIM’s leadership apparently became ever more certain of the company’s direction and superiority. But in 2007 and 2008, the groundwork was finally laid for software’s resurgence. Faster cell and data networks, at least in the U.S. and in many European and Asian countries, became ubiquitous. They became smarter too, offering things like location. Phones could also tap servers providing data over these upgraded networks to ser...