:: RIM patent losing steam ? ::
Stow Boyd's blog comments on a story in Business 2.0 about RIM's "single mailbox" patent possibly losing steam. Unfortunately, comments on Stow's blog (not his fault) are limited to 1000 characters, so I couldn't say what I wanted to say, which is:
It is not quite true to say that always-on email is commonplace now. I think that the uniqueness of RIM's solution was not widely understood. It is better to think of it as "constant sync" solution, and its uniqueness over most other solutions is that it interworks with the native email/PIM database, not with any email protocols. Many companies with standard wireless POP3 offerings touted their wares as comparable to RIM, that simply not being the case. The "Holy Grail" of corporate email solutions was to have a completely synchronised PIM operation without ever cradling, but even RIM did not solve that problem. (Having gone into it in some depth myself, it is a non-trivial problem and suggested to me a rethink about email protocols for the ubiquitous world we now live in.)
I have scrutinised the RIM "single mailbox" patent. It is nothing other than the Microsoft MAPI protocol described in a wireless context. I always felt it was scandalous to award such a patent, but patents don't work in intellectually obvious or fair ways, and that's part of the business landscape in the US with software patents; what I think about the patent is irrelevant.
My company developed a similar MAPI-based solution for Palm devices, but was not able to license it in the US due to the patent problem. In fact, we suffered a lot of commercial aggravation because of it.
Nonetheless, one has to be fair in criticism. The RIM solution is actually a good solution for business roadsters and I think most users end up addicted.
Having been in wireless solutions for a very long time, I contend that it is very difficult for any company to make a success in the wireless space with one idea, like RIM and many "wireless email" companies have attempted. Possibly, the days of a single idea business plan are dead anyhow. But the wireless landscape will be about huge numbers of applications amassing lots of micro-payment opportunities in myriad mobile marketplaces, most of which we probably have not envisaged yet. Bringing the Internet customised marketplace ability to the mobile world is probably what the future is all about, but I'm not sure that most operators have understood it yet, being telecoms folk and not computer folk.
2:54:53 PM 
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