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RIM has granted India access to its BlackBerry network, but not the ability to monitor secure customer e-mails.

The BlackBerry maker confirmed today that the Indian government now has the means to access its Messenger service.

"RIM has now delivered a solution that enables India's wireless carriers to address their lawful access requirements for our consumer messaging services, which includes BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) e-mail," Research In Motion said in a statement released today and e-mailed to CNET.

But RIM insisted that the access does not include the ability to monitor e-mails on … Read more

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion says news reports suggesting that it's close to an agreement to provide India with lawful access to monitor and access network data are "inaccurate" and "misleading."

One story CNET found, published yesterday in the Indian paper Mint, quotes an unnamed senior official from India's Home Ministry who said that an agreement is near that would give the Indian government access to the encrypted data on RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES).

"They have in principle agreed to provide us recorded data from their servers," the senior home … Read more

If your office has given you a BlackBerry for work purposes, you may soon be accessing your Google Apps Gmail, calendar, and contacts via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

On Friday, Google announced that some functionality in Google Apps, its suite of premium enterprise-level applications, will now give company-issued BlackBerrys some push and sync functionality.

The Google Apps Connector promises to push Gmail messages within 60 seconds, and sync in-box actions like assigning labels and archiving messages. You'll also be able to search contacts from the company's global address list, a huge bonus for mobile workers. Synchronization between the … Read more

The big news this week for Apple wasn't the new 3G iPhone. It was the business model behind the next-generation iPhone, and the threat it poses to Research in Motion (RIM). Apple's model depends on developers. RIM's model depends on devices.

If history repeats itself, the developers will win. Just ask Microsoft.

More on that in a minute. For now, consider the superior TCO (total cost of ownership) argument that Apple now has for both developers and end-users. Many enterprises are going to find the cost/benefit analysis of RIM vs. iPhone favoring the iPhone. RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) solution costs $5 to 10 per mailbox per month (for Exchange), plus an additional $10 per mailbox per month for BES, which includes a combination of licensing plus the cost of administering BES. Not so cheap.

The iPhone? It's still going to cost $5 to 10 per mailbox per month (for Exchange or Zimbra or whatever your mail service happens to be), but the extra $10 charge is wiped away. Gone. This leaves the enterprise with a two-times price advantage for the SaaS/iPhone world, which doesn't even include the cost of the device, which also continues to plummet.

Again, RIM's business model depends on extracting maximum value from each device/user, and it does so to good effect. Apple's business model is shifting to be about ubiquity of devices, and then the monetization of the applications.

Which will be better? Well, that depends on how one feels about developers and their impact on markets.… Read more