Thursday, December 08, 2005

Thurs - RIM moves to settle patent dispute

RIM has stated that they have held conversations with NTP via a court appointed arbitrator. They do seem to be at least attempting to negotiate a solution to the dispute. They clearly need to now as leading IT advisors Gartner and Forrester have suggested that IT bosses slow up on Blackberry implementations until the dispute is settled.

NTP, the owners of the patents that the Blackberry apparently infringes, have threatened to halt Blackberry sales in the US unless a settlement is met.

It's time for RIM to settle this thing once and for all. They're now risking way way more than the potential fines they would have to pay NTP. Their customers and investors are clearly and rightly getting spooked. And this could not happen at a worse time given that Microsoft and Nokia are finally presenting serious competiton to RIM.

So guys, put the patent dispute behind you, hug your customers hard and get back to the real battle - the battle for the market place. And think hard about whether you can go beyond email - if not I fear your gonna get stuck in an ever diminishing niche before too long.

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