RIM has announced that they will be releasing the full BlackBerry suite of applications onto Windows Mobile 6 devices later this year. Users will be able to install BlackBerry as an application, which when launched, will provide the standard BlackBerry home screen, inbox, and messaging suite of services.
Available for both Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) and Professional (Pocket PC) devices, BlackBerry for Windows Mobile is the latest evolution of RIM’s offerings. RIM has already gained support from AT&T for the project, and they expect to be the first carrier to offer the application to Windows Mobile 6 customers.
This comes as RIM’s prior offerings for Windows Mobile have been largely unsucessful. RIM offered BlackBerry as a protocol for Windows Mobile 5 devices, but it gained little traction due to requiring integration at both the device and carrier level. The new BlackBerry platform is expected to be as simple as a software download for an existing device (from the carrier’s web site). RIM also promises persistence past offerings could not deliver; users will be alerted to new messages and PIM-related tasks when the BlackBerry interface is hidden or not even launched.
[…] announced by RIM in 2007, the BlackBerry Application Suite virtualizes the BlackBerry OS completely on the […]