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Blackberry Competitor Announced
conq wrote to mention a BusinessWeek article reporting that NTP has licensed its wireless email patent to a new Blackberry competitor. Essentially, they're creating a competitor to Blackberry out of whole cloth, and bolstering their case against the popular handheld device maker. From the article: "The deal comes amid dwindling options for RIM, seller of the popular BlackBerry e-mail paging service. NTP four years ago successfully sued RIM for infringing on NTP's wireless e-mail patents. After a tentative $450 million settlement fell apart in June, RIM has battled back through court appeals, holding out hope that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) will strike down NTP's patents." This has not been a good month for RIM.
It comes with the default "straw-" skin but will come with different skins: "blue-", "red-", and "rasp-". Even a novel skin "black-" will make it's debut when RIM goes down in flaming glory after the Strawberry squashes the Blackberry.
:wq
Simple can be a good thing, but not if simple means "simple enough for the mentally challenged."
:)
Remember the intended audience. CEO's and self important VPs. They can't handle complicated technology. Face it the blackberry is just a replacement for the standard etch-a-sketch that most PHBs have trouble with.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
It's surprising to me that there is one very large group in the portable email device market that is consistently overlooked: Drug dealers. If there is any group that depends wholly on reliability of their Blackberry devices and could benefit from competition, it would be the miscellaneous crack, heroin, and meth dealers that inhabit our neighborhoods, hallways, and emergency rooms. They provide an invaluable service to congressmen and other miscellaneous lawyers, airline pilots, musicians, school bus drivers, doctors, clergy, SCO executives, Courtney Love, and daycare providers across the country. Their lives are on the line every day, and if there is no reliable wireless email system for these upstanding members of society, the entire industry will fail to thrive and eventually die. WE CAN'T LET THIS HAPPEN! OUR TRADE GAP WITH CHINA WILL SOAR! Without the drug dealers, there would be no DEA! And what do you suppose we would do then?!?! Go NTP go!
I don't really understand why everyone is getting so upset about this. Do you really think the US government will allow anything to happen to RIM? What is it that one high level government official said? Something like: "You can pry it out of my cold dead hands".
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