M$ licks lips at Blackberry crumble

[Alpine]

Vole greedily eyes up ultimate executive toy


HARDWARE FIRM Microsoft will use the frantic 3GSM conference held in Barcelona today to announce cunning plans it has to scoff market share from RIM's Blackberry device.

Pity those poor hacks forced to cede brain cells to the hundreds of vendors vying for their attention - a quick scan of the PR wires shows hundreds of releases already up there - with some vendors making dozens of announcements on the same day. It's an old IBM habit that Big Blue fortunately these days foreswears.

The latest Volish gig has the firm announcing four devices from telephone vendors and HP that allow for push mail.

The Blackberry is so popular - despite its recent NTP woes - that the vendor world+dog has come up with the ever popular word innovation which stands for: "When you can't think of something new, try to copy someone else's successful product".

Vodafone and Cingular are supporting the Microsoft push but perhaps all of 'em have forgotten that the reasons the iPod and the Crackberry have done so well is because they are one of a kind and look good too. Not that having a Blagberry makes you an executive, but it's certainly not a "me too" device. As a 21st century Saint Augustine might have said: "This is not innovation. This is enervation".

The INQuirer