Fixed Mobile Convergence

While Research in Motion (News - Alert) (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry, has been battling governmental opposition in India – and other Middle Eastern countries – over the secure transmission of corporate e-mails and messaging, the company has also been focusing on expansion.

According to an International Business Times report, the company has acquired some assts of DataViz, the maker of the Documents to Go application – which happens to be one of Apple’s (News - Alert) best selling apps, especially in 2009.

The acquisition was confirmed in the Digital Daily, including a statement issued by RIM:

"RIM has acquired some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry (News - Alert) platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but the transaction was not material to RIM in the context of RIM's financial results."

The popular Documents to Go app was developed by DataViz to allow smartphone users to create, open and edit Microsoft (News - Alert) Word, Excel and Power Point files. The app also helps in the synchronization of document files between a computer and a smartphone.

This acquisition comes right on the heels of DataViz’s termination of the development of the app for the Palm WebOS. Interestingly, the original app was first made for the Palm OS and this news is likely to be met with surprise within this user community.

For BlackBerry and BlackBerry users, this acquisition is only good news as the application adds to the app store, which continues to struggle to keep up with the Apple Apps Store and the Android (News - Alert) Market.

To truly drive success in the smartphone market, a maker and its smartphone must be able to offer a rich app sore and its smartphone OS must be readily accepted by the developer community. BlackBerry has so far failed to capitalize on the opportunities in both areas, continuing to survive on its corporate business volume.

Industry experts may view this latest acquisition as RIM’s attempt to build out the apps store through acquisitions instead of the BlackBerry OS from the ground up. It is still too early to say how effective this strategy will be in the overall market, especially as Apple begins to chip away at BlackBerry’s corporate share. If RIM hopes to gain anything in the consumer sector, however, it must be able to effective compete in the app space or call it a day.