3GWeek - Asia’s Mobile News

Yeah.. it is just word bubbled, but hey.. nobody knows what will happen in the future. Kyocera may buy Motorola or Sony Ericsson may acquire Indian Spice Mobile. A Lotus Evangelist, said that he advised the company he works for-IBM-to buy Canadian RIM, the maker of phenomenal Blackberry. Why he suddenly came up with the idea?

He argued:

Lotus worked with RIM very early on (remember the mushroom shaped blackberry) and we were thinking it would kill server revenue to RIM, instead it made email stronger as RIM made it clear they really did not want to be a contender for email messaging system of the world. I think in this case they made a wise choice.

He thought that since Apple and Google are threat for RIM’s Blackberry (with iPhone and soon-to-be-available Android, respectively), RIM needs more power as their patronage. RIM is specialized in push-email, while IBM has lot of money to spend. Now, RIM provides Lotus Connection clients, means like 2 different IMs for Sametime. The merger between these two will be a major shock for all parties; of course it will raise RIM positioning in mobile market.

What do I think? Well, IBM-with its subsidiary Lotus (mail and connect/messenger)-has never played in mobile area. Google hasn’t too, but Google has clear vision about future mobile technology, something that IBM doesn’t have in their roadmap-yet. The transaction may probably happen-in the future, but certainly not in near future. Maybe 5 years from now-at minimum. I think-for now-the name IBM Blackberry or maybe Blueberry-isn’t something catchy to hear.