PalmSource licensees to connect to BlackBerry

By Steve Malone

Posted on 19 May 2004 at 07:56

Research In Motion, developer of the corporate wireless solution Blackberry, has announced a deal with PalmSource to allow Palm licencees access to BlackBerry Connect. In future PDAs based on the Palm operating system will be able to use Blackberry to connect to email, diaries and other company data remotely.

PalmSource expects to make the Palm OS Mail Client that supports BlackBerry Connect available to Palm OS licensees in the second half of 2004.

Blackberry has become increasingly popular with companies wanting to give their employees outside the office secure access to the company network with a wireless solution. At the same time, Palm based devices are still strong contenders in the PDA market.

PalmSource has been losing ground to Microsoft's PocketPC OS acheiving only 32 per cent of the European market last year against 42 per cent in 2002 according to research published by Canalys. The same survey also found that BlackBerry's market share had leapt from 0.9 per cent to 8.0 per cent. However, both of them will be aware that Microsoft, with its own OS for PDAs and a presence both on the desktop and in the corporate server market can make life difficult in the coming years.

Strengthening its credentials as a secure method of transferring data wirelessly RIM has also shaken hands with PGP to improve compatibility between BlackBerry and PGP Universal, the system that provides full encryption of company networks and communications without user intervention. The goal is to provide 'seamless integration' for organisations which use both products.