Continued...

RIM’s problems grow monumentally when you see the whole list of vendors already lined up and nearly shipping products with DPT on it. The list includes Orange, Cingular, Vodafone and T-Mobile from the operators and Asus, HP, Fujitsu Siemens and Palm from the hardware side.

Obviously, if the service is rolling out next month, the hardware will be out in a matter of weeks and that just makes it even tougher for RIM.

Thirdly, after talking to RIM officials, they told us quite clearly that they provide the service and the backend, high level technical support. They are in no way involved with the sellers (partners/service providers) in how they figure out the pricing for the service as well as the handset. This is quite silly really and I don’t see Microsoft going this way.

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If anything, Microsoft will give vendors sops and will resort to arm twisting if it has to ensure that the service and devices are available at such affordable rates that customers don’t have to think before buying it. That will give them mass acceptance and penetration. Once that happens, Microsoft will surely leverage that to seal the deal for Blackberry.

The problems apart, I absolutely love the BlackBerry. It’s simple, its clutter free and it works. If Microsoft can deliver all these benefits at a lower cost, then it deserves to capture the market.