Quoted in Bloomberg - and some wireless ranting

I have a rather meaningless quote in a nice summation on Bloomberg about the RIM/NTP fracas.

To me, the real problem that RIM faces is a lack of third party development support. It's ironic that the Palm could have such good third-party support and a great ISV program, but never get email down the way RIM has. Why is that? Did the existance of the Palm standard email limit the demand for other solutions? There were 3rd party mail applications, but they still weren't as good as RIM's. Could the device/OS not handle it?

It will be interesting to see how J2ME vs. BREW will pan out as well. J2ME is definitely a much more open platform. Now that AT&T and Cingular have merged, will they compete against Verizon for enterprise customers?

We have always thought that the cell phone would make a great multi-purpose tool, especially for two-factor authentication. What we have found however, is that the carriers and device manufacturers either do not understand the need or they are justifiable targeting consumer markets with products like ringtones and games.

Perhaps now that authentication is a consumer play, the carriers will take notice?