Friday, October 10, 2008
Microsoft buying RIM? It makes sense...
The rumor mill today is producing an interesting news: Microsoft might be thinking of buying RIM. This is one of the million rumors that might not mean anything, but it is a good one...Would it make sense? I believe so.
Microsoft is missing a HW play in mobile. They do not have a device. They are fighting against two vendors, Apple and Nokia, that have devices (and services, and operating systems, but so does Microsoft). It has been proven (so far, open source is changing this) that it is nearly impossible to deliver a great experience without controlling the full chain: from the device, to the operating system, to the service (and RIM has been phenomenal at device and service, not that much on the OS in my opinion).
Microsoft being a HW company? Yes, they do it already, with the Xbox. It is not that far from what they are doing.
Why not doing a device from scratch, then? Well, it takes two/three years (too much) and RIM is so cheap today that they would make money just buying the stock... The BlackBerry Storm looks like a spectacular device, even solving the issue of tactile feedback on a no-keyboard device. They have more coming. And they have a full grip on the high end of the enterprise market.
Imagine RIM+Microsoft together in the enterprise, when Nokia just abandoned it and Apple has no intention to get into it. It would be a near monopoly, excluding open source. It would be so much fun... David and Goliath... Nice thought for the weekend ;-)
Posted by Fabrizio at 13:54
3 Comments:
Alexey Patsko said...
If MS indeed buys RIM I wonder what will happen to Microsoft OS strategy ... replacing RIM OS with Windows? will be such a mistake ... winding down Windows (and all business applications) to focus on RIM platform? very unlikely.... Keeping two independent sofware tracks? not practical.... merging two at some point? looks like the only possible option, still quite expensive.
Also wondering how the possible merger will affect the OEM market of Microsoft in a short run.... HTC & co. wont be much happy seeing Microsoft competing with them directly... Not that it is a huge market, but so important for Microsoft.
Anyway - will be fun to see what will happen. Thanks for the great post.
Comment Posted at 05:37
Paolo Savini said...
If Apple will not get in to enterprise, however someone else will do it with the iPhone:
"A nordic developer named Erik Kristiansen developed a beta software that will allow you to run Windows Mobile on the iPhone".
In this way, Microsoft could continue to use third party devices to place his OS and actually this device is the iPhone...
Comment Posted at 14:21
Paolo Savini said...
Gartner: Smartphone sales up in Q2 '08, BlackBerry leapfrogs Windows Mobile
http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/14/smartphone-sales-up-in-q2-08-blackberry-leapfrogs-windows-mobi/
