RIM outshines Palm but fails to dispel all doubts

Though, I am not a Crackberry aficionado, I do find it interesting that RIM is now fighting for relevancy in the smartphone market. Palm continues to disappoint despite it use of Open Source Software. The LIMO and ALP projects are very interesting, but I can't seem to understand why there aren't more devices in the mainstream. Perhaps the mind share of the average developer is becoming more Android and iPhone.

Though I have never owned a RIM product, I did notice that it took quite awhile for them to market a device where you could actually use "touch" to manipulate the GUI. Palm devices have had this feature for at least 6yrs. Additionally the proprietary enterprise server that had been a something of a cash cow, competitive advantage (albeit ridiculously expensive) for corporate users is now being given away. When you have free software tools (ie IMAPD and OpenLDAP) it really does not make much sense to continue spending a huge monthly fees to support always on email. Besides methinks the huge corporate accounts are dwindling in this economic downturn. If RIM is to grow inside the SMB market, they will need to deliver more malleable tools to the end-user.

I'm not going to berate Palm anymore in this space, as I continue to use my trusty Treo650. Eventually, I'm going to have to migrate to a more robust platform that provides me with a somewhat real-time network (3G perhaps) and a few more social networking options. I do not need my entire smartphone experience to be laden with Twitter and Facebook. I'm more interested in running ssh, VNC and openvpn or irc client when the time arises.

RIM Surprises the Street - Battles Opens Source Offerings from Palm and Google