This would’ve been unthinkable a couple of years ago, but Palm, in its ever-changing strategy, has tied up with RIM. I don’t know who this helps more. RIM definitely wins in that it allows users that want to migrate away from current devices to the Treo or other Palm devices to stick with the Blackberry service, but I don’t know if it helps then gain any new customers.
However, the unknown factor here is the Carrier view. More than likely operators have been pushing Palm to support RIM since many of them already have Blackberry as a business email service, and they are not going to take on an additional product lines unless it has synergies – that would remove a large distribution channel for Palm. Palm wins big here. It’s in the interests of the operators to push devices which encourage usage of the largest number of services on the network. If Palm finds itself on the operator storefront, they can be assured that the operator will push sales hard. As the article states – be ready for some Carrier deals to be announced.
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