Merriam-Webster

Windows Mobile 6.5: Instant Classic

John Paczkowski in News on February 18, 2010 at 1:41 pm PT

If “Windows Phone” is to be the new designation for Microsoft’s mobile OS, the company can’t afford to have four-month-old Windows Mobile 6.5 muddle its branding. So the company is renaming it. The rumored moniker: “Windows Phone Classic.”

D7 Interview: RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis Says It’s Not a One-Size-Fits-All Business

John Paczkowski in D7 on May 27, 2009 at 2:22 pm PT

If the iPhone and Palm Pre are perfecting the convergence of cellphone and PC, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry anticipated it. And that’s largely thanks to co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, its patron saint, who conceived the BlackBerry in 1999 as a two-way pager, and over the ensuing years, transformed it into the device we know today. The BlackBerry revolutionized corporate life with a famously addictive real-time, almost-anywhere connectivity, which prompted Merriam-Webster to recognize its “Crackberry” alias as the 2006 Word-of-the-Year. But that was three years ago–a lifetime in the mobile market. In 2009, “Crackberry” is a cliche, and RIM, though still a handset juggernaut, must work harder to maintain its dominant player status in an enterprise smartphone space crowded with formidable challengers: Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, Google and its open source Android OS.