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RIM Strikes Back, Files Countersuit Against Visto
SilentOne writes "Research In Motion Ltd. launched an all-out assault on competitors yesterday, countersuing its latest legal nemesis and introducing software to pre-empt imminent launches by other challengers. The countersuit also gives RIM a chance to move the patent battle to a courtroom where it has a better chance of beating Visto. Visto filed suit against RIM on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, which reportedly favours patent holders in 92% of cases heard by the court. Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-chief executive, said the company wants the trial moved to the Dallas area, where RIM's U.S. headquarters are located, for practical reasons.
Meanwhile, RIM is giving away a free software package, valued at US$3,000, to hook the e-mail accounts of small businesses and consumers up to BlackBerries instead of competitive devices from Palm and Microsoft."
Having used the latest BBs for over a year with the best set up (I work for RIM btw), let me give you a few reasons why the BB is different and so good.
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-full integration with Exchange/Lotus/groupwise. Any important action which I can do from outlook, I can do from my BB and everythign is mirrored and synchronized
--typically any mail sent to my email gets to the device less than 1-2s after it gets to outlook. deleting, marking as read, forwarding, replying etc, everythign you do to a message on the BB is mirrored in outlook an vice versa.
--calender is wirelessly sync'ed and you can accept requests, send out invitations etc.
--memos, tasks, contacts etc, etc are all wirelessly sync'ed as well. Entering any such data on the BB will automatically send it to outlook. Beleive me, this is VERY useful.
--the BB is efficient and uses A LOT less bandwidth than MS PPC handhelds.
--RIM's has infrastructure is very reliable.
--Security is very very important. The US government uses is extensively, and they even have a BB smart card reader.
--it can be administered remotely, have applications pushed to it, different IT policies enforced etc, pretty easily.
Basically, the handhelds themselves are pretty nice (though not exceptional), the whole package is unbeatable. No wonder the only way companies are trying to stop RIM is through the courts.