Blackberry Spreads Out With Multimedia Partnerships
Multimedia is blowing up on Researh in Motion’s Blackberry as RIM extends its charm to consumers. Microsoft’s Live Search will be blended into the Blackberry, a MySpace front end will be evolved, and interfaces will be formed for TiVo and Ticketmaster. Slacker will also develop an applilcation for its radio content.
RIM and Microsoft will work to integrate Microsoft’s Live Search features into the Blackberry browser and Blackberry maps. The Live Search capability, especially tied to Blackberry maps, will vie with other mobile location applications. Yahoo’s Fire Eagle maps restaurant searches according to your GPS position, and Yahoo’s Blueprint platform hints at geo-aware capabilities for cell phones.
The RIM-Microsoft consolidation is also expected to include Blackberry-based Hotmail and Internet Messenger. MySpace will forge with RIM to develop a smartphone front end its social-networking site, so Blackberry users can get access their pages on the go.