In the last few months, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) has stepped up in its fight against Apple, by securing new deals and by developing products that are popular even among consumers. It's had to since Apple is now targeting the business crowd by adding Microsoft's (NSDQ: MSFT) ActiveSync technology to the iPhone. Here's three examples of what RIM is doing based on news from today:
-- RIM plans to sell a BlackBerry flip phone that opens up to a screen and a keypad. The device will probably go on sale in the U.S. near the end of the year for $149 or less with subsidies from wireless carriers, according to an analyst's note, Bloomberg reported. The company hopes the phone will be popular among the users who have grown accustomed to devices like the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Razr, but are looking for a higher-end business device. RIM may also being working on a touch-screen phone called the "MediaBerry,'' which would compete directly with the iPhone, the analyst wrote. That phone could be ready for sale by October or November.
-- SAP and Research In Motion announced today a partnership that will bring SAP enterprise software programs, beginning with customer-management software, to the BlackBerry. Release. Dow Jones reported that the software will be available in weeks, and that RIM's CEO Jim Balsillie, was defensive about its competitive position in regards to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). "What we're doing no one else can do," he said.
--- Brightpoint, a U.S.-based cellphone distributor, said it has reached a deal to resell the BlackBerry in territories that may include North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa and the Asia Pacific, reported Reuters. Following this deal, Apple's iPhone is the only major phone that Brightpoint does not sell. In RIM's fiscal year ended March 1, it said it shipped 14 million phones. Apple has repeatedly said it was on course to sell 10 million iPhones this year.
