February 17, 2006 Microsoft Makes Move To Rattle RIM By Kevin McLaughlin Courtesy of Microsoft and its OEM partners fired a shot across Research In Motion’s bow last week at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, Spain, unveiling the first batch of smartphones designed to compete with the BlackBerry. Windows Mobile 5.0-based devices such as Hewlett-Packard’s iPaq hw6900 Mobile Messenger will include support for push e-mail, which allows users to get e-mail from an Exchange server without the added expense of third-party software. This feature—central to the BlackBerry’s popularity—is enabled by the Messaging and Security Feature Pack, which Microsoft introduced at its July partner show and quietly distributed to mobile phones and OEMs in the fall. Partners said because Microsoft’s push e-mail solution doesn’t require additional servers or licensing fees, the Redmond, Wash.-based vendor could grab some of BlackBerry’s market share. “The big knock against the BlackBerry solution is that it’s somewhat of a walled garden,” said Dan Croft, president and CEO of Mission Critical Wireless, Lincolnshire, Ill. RIM, Waterloo, Ontario, has tried to make it easier for handset vendors to incorporate BlackBerry functionality but its efforts have met with little success in North America, he added. “RIM is still trying to get businesses to buy into the value of paying extra money for an additional server,” said John Starkweather, group product manager in Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded Service Division. PAULA ROONEY contributed to this story. E-mail This Story Print This Story Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			Chambers Says Video Will Drive Collaboration Office Live Goes Live Security Watch: RSA Expo Sneak Preview Vendors, VARs Pushing Secure IM As Necessity IBM Goal: IM Interop Across The Board RIM Says BlackBerry Work-Around Ready If Needed     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.