Earlier this week, we noted speculation that RIM might be talking to Samsung about a licensing deal for its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 OS. Now here’s yet another theory to consider, this one perhaps a bit wilder than those we’ve heard to date: What if RIM were to simply hand over its BlackBerry business to Samsung in return for royalties?

Avian Research’s Matthew Thornton feels it’s a possibility. “A potential and interesting development would be if RIM were to shutter or de-emphasize its own device platform,” Thornton explains. “[By doing this it could] dramatically cut costs, focus on its network and enterprise services and the BlackBerry 10 platform/ecosystem, and allow Samsung to be the de facto device manufacturer for BlackBerry devices (perhaps co-branded) with Samsung paying RIM a licensing fee similar to what it does with Microsoft.”

Thornton’s theory sounds like a bit of a stretch, but it does have some compelling aspects.

RIM is clearly struggling to compete in today’s smartphone market, but its secure messaging platform, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), is still among the best around.

Why not hand off the BlackBerry hardware business to a company that’s responsible for some of the best and most popular Android smartphones? Then the company can double down on BBM and other enterprise services that it actually does well.

Earlier this month, the company was forced to change the name of its forthcoming BBX operating system when Basis International filed for a temporary restraining order, claiming RIM was infringing on its trademark. Now it’s being challenged over BBM, the nickname for its popular instant-messaging service, BlackBerry Messenger.

Broadcast industry group BBM Canada is dragging RIM into court, claiming trademark infringement. And it has good reason to do so: It owns the trademarks on “BBM” in both the U.S. and Canada. The group seeks an injunction prohibiting RIM’s use of the BBM mark, as well as damages.

“We want our name back,” BBM Canada President and CEO Jim MacLeod told the Globe and Mail. “I find it kind of amazing that this wouldn’t have been thought about before they decided to use the name.”

Seriously. Particularly since BBM Canada has been around for more than 60 years.

And then there’s the fact that RIM’s 2009 attempt to register the BBM trademark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office was denied on the grounds that it was already in use.

But evidently this meant little to RIM, which continues to use the BBM mark to this day over BBM Canada’s protestations, and will soon have to defend its behavior in court. A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for January 11, 2012.

Update: Reached for comment, RIM offered AllThingsD the following statement:

“Since its launch in July 2005, BlackBerry Messenger has become a tremendously popular social networking service. In 2010, RIM started to formally adopt the BBM acronym, which had, at that point, already been organically coined and widely used by BlackBerry Messenger customers as a natural abbreviation of the BlackBerry Messenger name. The services associated with RIM’s BBM offering clearly do not overlap with BBM Canada’s services and the two marks are therefore eligible to co-exist under Canadian trademark law. The two companies are in different industries and have never been competitors in any area. We believe that BBM Canada is attempting to obtain trademark protection for the BBM acronym that is well beyond the narrow range of the services it provides and well beyond the scope of rights afforded by Canadian trademark law. RIM has therefore asked the Court to dismiss the application and award costs to RIM. Further, for clarity, RIM’s application to register BBM as a trademark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) is pending and we are confident that a registration will eventually issue. The inference by BBM Canada that CIPO has refused RIM’s BBM trademark application is quite frankly very misleading.”

This time it’s Indonesia, which is threatening to cut off BlackBerry data services if Research In Motion doesn’t locate a data server in the country as it promised earlier this year.

A bit of background: Back in January, RIM made four commitments to the Badan Regulasi Telekomunikasi Indonesia (BRTI), Indonesia’s telecommunications regulator:

• That it would establish a network of over 50 BlackBerry Expert Centers throughout Indonesia
• That it would work with Indonesian law enforcement to provide lawful access to messages and emails from suspected criminals
• That it would restrict access to pornography on its network
• That it would establish a “regional network aggregator” or server to which Indonesian carriers could connect to ensure they’re getting good data speeds

RIM delivered on all four. But evidently it didn’t carry out the fourth in quite the way the BRTI wanted. It put the data center in Singapore, which is not geographically all that far, but a different country and not nearly as “regional” as the BRTI would like. Aggravating matters further, Indonesia has been asking for a local server for nearly three years.

In other words, the BRTI is not at all happy with RIM right now. Apparently it’s outraged enough that it told IDG it plans to make a local server a precondition of RIM’s continued operation in Indonesia. BRTI commissioner Heru Sutadi told the publication that RIM must provide the local server if it wants to continue to operate its BlackBerry Internet Service and BlackBerry Messenger in the country. If it doesn’t do as BRTI asks, those services could end up being cut off.

Reached for comment, a RIM spokesperson said that while the company has been working closely with the Indonesian government, it has not been advised of any specific requirements extending beyond what it has already done. The statement in full, below:

RIM has been working closely with government bodies in Indonesia , but has not been advised of any specific requirements extending beyond what it has already satisfied in writing to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MOCI) on September 23, 2011.

RIM continues to discuss a new, potential investment in Indonesia that would support the growth and expansion of the country’s software development industry and RIM expects to provide further details at a future date.

On September 23, RIM notified the MOCI in writing that it has fully addressed all of the requests made to it by MOCI in January of this year. This included notification that:

1. RIM has established a network of 50+ BlackBerry Expert Centers throughout Indonesia which are detailed on: http://id.blackberry.com/peaceofmind/location.jsp and provide customers with superior after sales support

2. RIM is working with Law Enforcement Agencies in Indonesia for the provision of Lawful Access as stipulated by national law

3. RIM has completed the establishment of a regional network aggregator. Many Indonesian carriers are now connected, addressing the specific stated concern of MOCI, which applied strictly to the speed of data flows.

4. RIM has established a content filtering system, per the requirements outlined by the government.

BlackBerry continues to provide safe, secure and reliable communications for its users.

Unlike those services, though, ChatON is designed to work across different phone operating systems. The service, announced back in August, is for now available as a download from Samsung’s app store and on the Android Market.

In addition to conventional text-based instant messages, ChatON also allows multimedia and animated messages using a combination of audio, scribbled text and a background image, Samsung said. It also supports group chat.

Samsung plans to preload the software on smartphones running its Bada operating system starting later this month, and will make it “gradually” available for other operating systems by the end of the year.

The Korean electronics giant showed off the service last month at the IFA trade show.

“Through its multi-platform and global availability, ChatON heralds a new age of mobile communication,” Samsung Senior VP Kang Min Lee said in a statement.

Kik — which, like Research In Motion, is based in Waterloo, Canada — got its start on the BlackBerry but had been missing for months after RIM pulled its service. A month after pulling Kik’s app from its store, RIM sued the company.

The 20-person company has put its focus on other smartphone platforms, and now has about five million registered users sending more than 300 million messages a month.

Although Kik has seen plenty of growth from Android and iPhone users, the company wanted to restore service for BlackBerry customers and has been working for the past several months to make that happen. At around noon on Wednesday, Kik relaunched for the BlackBerry — just as RIM’s outage spread to North America. But because it was redesigned to not use any of the BlackBerry infrastructure, Kik remained functional even as many services stayed down.

“It’s so ironic,” said Kik CEO Ted Livingston.

Even though Kik remains embroiled in litigation, Livingston said he isn’t rooting for RIM to fail.

“I’m not enjoying it,” Livingston said of RIM’s troubles. “We’re in Waterloo, and RIM is a pretty important company to Waterloo and Canada.”

Indeed, Livingston himself is a BlackBerry user.

“It’s personally affecting me,” he said. “I can’t get work done.”

Livingston spent much of Wednesday shuttling back to his desk to check email, since he wasn’t getting any on his mobile device. By Wednesday evening, though, he had email up and running on an iPhone.

And that, of course, is the big danger for RIM — that longtime customers might use the outage as an opportunity to switch.

For his part, Livingston said he isn’t sure whether the BlackBerry will remain an important part of his business.

“We are not sure how important it is going to be, long-term, to support BlackBerry, but we had a lot of people request it and so we thought it was important to get back on the platform.”

Samsung’s service, to be known as ChatON, is the latest effort by a phone maker to follow in the footsteps of BlackBerry Messenger. Apple has already announced the iMessage service that will be part of the forthcoming iOS 5 operating system update.

Dedicated messaging services such as BlackBerry Messenger and iMessage allow customers to bypass carrier SMS charges while also enabling advanced features such as delivery confirmation and the ability to see when a user is typing a reply.

Although not the first to the game, Samsung has the ability to link together a significant number of devices, pledging to eventually offer the service on a range of smartphones, feature phones and even PCs and tablets. The company is also adding some unique features, including the ability to scribble a message, or to see with whom one communicates the most.

“With ChatON, Samsung has vastly simplified mobile communication by allowing users to connect to our upcoming feature phones and all major smartphones in the market,” Samsung’s Ho Soo Lee said in a statement.

Over the weekend, Samsung also announced new tablets and phones supporting LTE networks, and is expected to at long last bring its Galaxy S II phone to the U.S., with a launch event slated for Tuesday in New York. It was originally slated for Monday night, but the event was pushed back a day because of Hurricane Irene.

A couple of tweaks to my earlier report: Most important is that BBM Music subscribers can “share” songs with friends who also use the service. Which means that your pool of available songs could expand well beyond the 50 associated with your account.

Other details: You can only change up to 25 of the songs in your collection each month. And while music sources I talked to thought an international rollout wouldn’t kick in until next year, Research In Motion says it will be available in many territories later this year. For now, the beta is limited to the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

The big picture is the same: On a price-per-song basis, BBM Music isn’t nearly as good as the $10 for unlimited music services offered by MOG, Rhapsody, Spotify, etc. Nor will it give you access to all the songs you already own, a la new cloud services from Amazon, Google and Apple. But RIM will be marketing this as a service that’s about sharing and “personalization,” not access to a music library.

That’s the basic pitch behind BBM Music, the new subscription service Research In Motion plans to roll out soon.

As previously reported, the BlackBerry maker is in late-stage talks with the big music labels; music industry sources believe RIM is aiming for a beta launch in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom in early September. A RIM rep declined to comment.

Some other details:

• A full-fledged rollout is planned for the first three territories later this fall.
• RIM is negotiating global licenses with the music companies, and expects to launch in other territories in 2012; the big idea is to piggyback on the success of RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service, which has more than 45 million users worldwide.
• Subscribers won’t be able to export their music to PCs or other hardware, with the exception of RIM’s much-maligned PlayBook tablet.
• Subscribers will be able to share songs with friends who are also BBM Music subscribers.

So why would anyone pay $5 a month to get 50 songs on their phone, when they can pay $10 a month and get an unlimited number of songs, that work on lots of different devices, from services like Rdio and Rhapsody?

Reasonable question! But RIM seems to be assuming that its subscribers won’t ask. Instead, it is playing up the notion that BBM Music will be about “personalizing” your phone, in the same way that ringtones supposedly did a decade ago.

Ringtones, as you’ll recall, let buyers play a few seconds of a song, and sold for a couple bucks, while full songs from Apple’s iTunes went for 99 cents. And for a few years, the music companies and the wireless carriers sold lots and lots of ringtones. (Crazy Frog!)

As I wrote yesterday, I don’t think a mini-subscription service is a terrible idea. Yes, standard subscription services offer much more bang for the buck, but they have yet to take the world by storm. And while people say they want unlimited music, they generally end up listening to a very small number of songs, over and over.

And if RIM can integrate billing through the carriers — so its users can sign up directly on their phones without having to take out a credit card — even better. This won’t save the company, but I don’t see how it hurts it.

And when word broke yesterday that RIM was working with the music labels to launch yet another music service, it was time to reach — slowly, because at this point who really cares? — for the bat again.

But it’s possible that RIM may not have a half-bad idea here: A scaled-back feature that gives some of its remaining customers something they’d like, and not much more.

As described by The Wall Street Journal’s Ethan Smith, the new service will give users access to a mere 50 songs at a time, and will let them share the songs with their friends via BlackBerry Messenger.

Is that it? For RIM’s sake, I hope so. Because at a certain price, it sort of makes sense: Yes, everyone says they want access to an unlimited world of music. But lots of people listen to the same small group of songs over and over.

And if RIM is smart — I know — they won’t position it as a competitor to Apple’s dominant iTunes, or the subscription services like Spotify that have yet to take off. They’ll sell it as a cool way to show off your favorite few songs of the moment, and tell your friends about it.

Again, if this works, it will depend on pricing — a couple bucks a month would make sense — and execution. And RIM hasn’t given us much reason to think it will get either element right. But the modest scope of RIM’s ambitions — pulling this off sure isn’t as hard as making a credible iPad competitor — gives them a shot here.

And if BBM Music does work, it wouldn’t be a reason to buy a new BlackBerry, but it might make you happier you own one. And that would be a modest win for a company searching for any kind of victory, anywhere.

And now, just because I can, a Rick Rubin Queen remix from back in the days when mobile phones were shoe-sized:

The music service is designed to work with RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger, the company’s proprietary instant-message system, according to people who have discussed it with RIM executives. These people said that BBM Music, as the service is to be known, could launch as soon as next week.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Our only comment is that if the government would like to talk about this we’d be happy to listen.

Twitter PR exec Rachel Bremer, responding to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s trial balloon to limit access to Twitter, Facebook and communication technologies like BlackBerry Messenger in the aftermath of his country’s riots.

In a speech to Parliament today, Cameron appeared to endorse the idea that posts on Facebook and Twitter, and communication via BlackBerry Messenger, helped fuel the violence that crippled his country for several days. And he floated the notion of a government-sanctioned crackdown.

From his prepared remarks:

Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media.

Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.

And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.

And here, wags will point out that British cops are also using social media, because they posted photos of looters on a Flickr page – here’s one the cops say was taken from a looter’s own Twitter post – and isn’t that a double standard, blah blah blah. Don’t waste your energy debating that one.

If a crackdown moves forward, though, it will put services like Facebook and Twitter in a tricky position: The services’ standard line is that they’ll comply with requests from cops and courts in whatever country they operate in when it comes to subpoenas and the like. But actually censoring communication is a different matter. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has already said it would work with cops trying to trace text messages sent using its service.

Also worth bearing in mind: Freedom of speech is already much more limited in the U.K. than in the U.S.; recall the farcical but somewhat effective effort to prevent U.K. newspapers and Web sites from printing soccer star Ryan Giggs’ name this spring.

UPDATE: Here’s a response from Twitter spokeswoman Rachel Bremer: “Our only comment is that if the government would like to talk about this we’d be happy to listen.”

The iMessage service, which sits alongside existing communications mechanisms like text messaging and e-mail, offers many of the same features that have made BlackBerry Messenger popular, including things like delivery confirmation and the ability to tell when a message has been read or when someone is typing a reply.

According to Apple, iMessage will allow messages to be sent to all one’s iOS devices–iPhone, iPad and iPod touch–provided they are running iOS 5. Messages, which can consist of text, photos, videos or contact information, can be sent over either Wi-Fi or 3G and arrive in the Messages application. The messages are also encrypted, Apple said.

Once a mainstay among corporate users, RIM has been losing ground in North America as users have flocked to iPhone and Android devices. BlackBerry Messenger had been among the features that have kept those loyal to RIM in the fold.

A RIM representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brian Blair, an analyst at Wedge Partners, said the impact to RIM won’t be immediate, given that iMessage won’t arrive until the fall and will take some time to attract a critical mass. But, by next year, it could be yet another factor working against the company.

“Assuming it is widely adopted by iOS users broadly, it will become one more reason for users to defect from BlackBerry in 2012 and beyond since BBM, for many users, has become the primary reason to use a BlackBerry,” Blair said.

Although known for its keyboard and enterprise messaging strength, Blair noted that the appeal of BlackBerry Messenger has helped RIM with young people and college students.

“There are regions around the world and college campuses and other social circles where you see high rates of BlackBerry adoption and BBM is the main reason,” Blair said. “If all your friends are on a BlackBerry and using BBM, you need one too. So will iMessage make them switch? We’ll see.”

Blair said that at first blush, it appears that Apple has matched a lot of BlackBerry Messenger’s features. The key, though, is whether it catches on with iPhone and iPad owners. “BBM took years to gain ground and really become a standard tool among BlackBerry users,” Blair said. “It didn’t happen overnight. But Apple has the user base to replicate BBM’s success and iMessage’s cross-device interoperability gives the application high odds of doing well.”

Complete coverage:

• Apple’s WWDC 2011 Keynote: Spotlight on Software
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs Takes the Stage
• Mac OS X Lion Coming in July via Mac App Store
• IOS 5 to Offer Improved Browsing, Notifications, Twitter Integration, 197 Other Features
• The Unlikely Breakout Stars of WWDC: Two Podcasters From the U.K.
• Google, Amazon Dodge a Bullet: Apple’s iCloud Music Is a Meh. (Luckily, There’s Much, Much More)
• Today in Hyperbole (or Possibly Reality): What Did Apple Just Kill?
• Apple’s Lion and Microsoft’s Windows 8 Both Show Mobile’s Influence
• Three Things to Take Away From Apple’s WWDC Announcements (Video)
• Apple’s Invisible iCloud: The Promise of Simple, Seamless Sync
• 25 Million iPads, 1 Billion Tweets: WWDC 2011 by the Numbers
• Apple Delivers Another Slap to RIM’s Face With iMessage
• Apple Enables Post-PC Era With iOS 5, but Are Users Ready?

From the CollegeHumor dudes, who aim inside, accurately, on this one. Soundtrack by BlackBerry Messenger:

“They have given us a solution to the Messenger service,” India’s home affairs minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, said today. “We will insist that they give us the solution for the enterprise service too.”

And RIM will likely insist it can’t. Unless the situation has suddenly changed from last week, when VP Robert Crow reiterated the company’s claim that it cannot decipher the encrypted corporate emails sent over its network. “We can’t give a solution for enterprise services,” he said. “It’s not possible to do so, because the keys of that service are with the corporate enterprises and corporate entity that owns the server.”

So what, then? That’s not yet clear, but we may know more shortly. Said Chidambaram, “I think a decision [about the future of RIM in India] will be taken today by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Telecom Ministry.”

How do you say “deadline extension” in Hindi?

“RIM has set up an interim arrangement for lawful interception of BlackBerry, or BBM services,” the federal home ministry said in a statement.

India had threatened to ban the Canadian company’s BlackBerry corporate email and messenger services if RIM failed to come up with tools by the end of August to monitor the service.

The country also said it will test methods and review the situation towards the end of October.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Sources in the Indian government tell Reuters that the country’s interior ministry has asked RIM (RIMM) for the ability to monitor BlackBerry corporate emails as well. “They have started giving us access to messenger service from September 1,” the source said. “Discussions are under way so that we get access to the other service which is corporate email so that we can read it in readable format.”

Faced with threats to suspend some BlackBerry services in India, RIM executives seem to be reassessing their cede-no-ground position on these issues and working to find a balance between the privacy needs of their customers and compliance with foreign-government security requirements.

I’ve asked RIM for comment on the Reuters report and will update here if I’m given one.