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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.
My Pocket PC PDA phone finally failed after I ripped out the charging jack by accident. A family member had an unused Blackberry 7100 phone that I threw my SIM card into. I've been using in for 2 days and I honestly believe the Blackberry is one of the worst produced handhelds I have ever seen. The scroll wheel is efficient only if you use the push e-mail, but the device does not seem very powerful, intuitive or expandable. Simple can be a good thing, but not if simple means "simple enough for the mentally challenged."
If Blackberry's major market was offering non-techie CEOs an easy to use device, I guess it works fine. Yet as common PC users become power users, I'd guess they'll outgrow the device and want more power and expandability (and customizable user interface). Using it right now reminds me more of an etch-a-sketch combined with a speak-and-spell. The Blackberry with T-mobile doesn't even use T-mobiles GPRS Internet plan, they want me to get some Blackberry plan. Even my old Nokias use the GPRS Internet plan (a great backup if you break phones as often as I do).
If Blackberry beats out the patent problems, will they have much of a future with a product that seems outdated by almost 5 years? Do many users here use their Blackberry and like it? I've been using PDAs since before the original Newton, and this device is just hokey. I feel like I have a trophy wife that looks nice but doesn't actually do anything. What am I missing?
So Visto have managed to licence what appears to be a non-existant set of patents from a company no-one has heard of. They must be betting the barn that the US legal system continues to come down hard on RIM and they have to shut up shop. Visto aren't new though, they've been around providing push email services for a while.. so perhaps they just bottled out when the NTP lawyers turned up.
One final point.. do you think that RIM would be having these problems if it was a US company rather than a Canadian one? Microsoft gets away with infringing patents all the time, but it's yet to be proved that RIM actually *has* and yet they are punished far more harshly than Microsoft ever was.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
The only thing it has going for it is the push email. My MS Smartphone receives email but only when it connects and checks my mailbox. Maybe if I had an important email that was received 1 minute after it just checked, I'd have to wait 29 more minutes to have it automatically check again. If my almost half-hour were THAT important to me, I would consider a BB.
You're right though.. they SUCK as a PDA but that's because they aren't supposed to be PDAs. It's an email terminal and nothing else. The user interface is complete crap, the scroll wheel is impossible to get used to. The only thing it does well is make and receive calls and email push.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
With such a generic patent (wireless email) and success against RIM, will they go after the Treo next? Other "smartphones" ?
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
1. Go back to old way patents were done - which includes working implementation upon application. Thus ideas become unpatentable. Same with business methods. It will also render 90% all the unreadable legalese to obscure what you are patenting obsolete.
2. Punish non-English application. No, I don't mean application in a foreign language, just the ones that read like they are. Plain english is a must. Jail time in Gitmo otherwise.
2. Raise price to apply for patent to $10,000 - while it may seem to screw the "little guy" it actually will kill corporations trying to patent every little thing. Even a little operation will be able to afford to patent 1 worthwhile application, but will corporate America still be able to afford to apply for 10's of thousands of trivial patents?
3. Part of application fee (say 1/2) will go as a bounty to anybody who can disprove it - in other words show prior art, etcetera. This could be anybody - college students, professors, employees of another company.
That's it:)
NTP has promised to exempt government employees from the shutdown, so noone in congress will be impacted: CNN link about it.
The BB has probably the best j2me support. Very easy to program for. Supports many JSRs without much nonsense. I don't care for the form factor or the scrollwheel though. The push email is very nice, though not necessary, for me. .Net for it, but again, this was not a huge deal. I don't like the keyboard much, but otherwise, not too shabby.
The Treo 650 is a pretty sweet device. This is my primary phone/pda.The latest software patches seem to have made it fairly stable. The keyboard is the best, the screen is amazing. Developing daemon software for it in j2me is not feasible, however, since the device suspends java apps when the screen turns off (which is all the time). However, we are dedoing our app in Palm's native stuff, and it is not bad.
The windows phones are not too bad either (Sprint 6600, 6601, 6700). We did have to redevelop our software in
So, for anyone to select what they like from these devices for daily use, it would probably come down to personal preference. My favorite is the Treo 650. But the others definitely have their own stuff that can make them more attractive to users of a different profile.
-naeem
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not being entirely sure of the phrase's meaning:
Cut out of whole cloth
CUT OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH - "Wholly false; without foundation of truth. Back in the fifteenth century, 'whole cloth' was used synonymously with 'broad cloth,' that is, cloth that ran the full width of the loom. The term dropped into disuse along in the eighteenth century, except in the figurative sense. In early use, the phrase retained much of the literal meaning, a thing was fabricated out of the full amount or extent of that which composed it.But by the nineteenth century it would appear that tailors or others who made garments were pulling the wool over the eyes of their customers, for, especially in the United States, the expression came to have just the OPPOSITE meaning. Instead of using whole material, as they advertised, they were really using patched or pieced goods, or, it might be, cloth which had been falsely stretched to appear to be of full width." From "A Hog on Ice" by Charles Earle Funke (1948, Harper & Row)
So when they say "they're creating a competitor to Blackberry out of whole cloth", what are they implying?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
There are many devices that do a lot of things better than a BlackBerry, but no one does Email better than a BlackBerry does. When you have full Enterprise integration with wireless sync, it's almost like having Outlook everywhere you go. If you read a new email on your BlackBerry, it gets marked as read in Outlook (via Exchange). Reply to an email and it shows up as "replied" and a copy of your email is inserted into your Sent box. It takes some time to get used to, and I didn't like it at first, but now I can't imagine going back to not having it, and I know MANY people that can't live without it.
If you're using a BlackBerry device with only POP3 accounts or with Exchange without Wireless Sync, there are many other devices, particularly Treos, that are much better suited. The 7100 (which is what I have) has much better phone functionality than previous BlackBerries, but it's not nearly as good as modern, dedicated phone interface (like a Samsung or Sony Ericsson). You really have to be close to your email to appreciate a BlackBerry.