Is Microsoft going to buy RIM or Nokia?

RIM MS Nokia

The idea has been kicked around for at least five years. Days after the iPhone’s introduction in January 2007, Seeking Alpha suggested that the Xbox maker ought to buy RIM in order to build an XPhone. In retrospect, this would have saved both companies a lot of grief.

It’s early 2007 and the BlackBerry maker is riding high. With its Microsoft Exchange integration; a solid Pim (personal information manager) that neatly combines mail, calendar, and contacts; and the secure BlackBerry Messenger network, the “CrackBerry” is rightly perceived as the best smartphone on the market.

I love my BlackBerry and once I manage to get a hosted Exchange account for the family, I show my ungeeky spouse the ease of over-the-air (OTA) synching between a PC and the BlackBerry. “No cable?” No cable. She promptly ditches her Palm device. One by one, our adult children follow suit. For a brief time, we are a BlackBerry family.

But the BlackBerry’s success blinds RIM executives. They don’t see – or refuse to believe – that the iPhone poses a threat to their dominance. A little later, Android comes on the scene. Apple and Google deploy technically superior software platforms that, by comparison, expose the BlackBerry’s weaker underpinnings.

In 2010, RIM acquires the QNX operating system in an effort to rebuild its software foundations, but it’s too late. The company has lost market share and shareholders see RIM squander 75% of its market cap.

Now, imagine: on the heels of the iPhone introduction in 2007, Microsoft acquires RIM and quickly proceeds to do what they’ve only now accomplished with Windows Phone 7 – they ditch the past and build a modern system. This would have saved Microsoft a lot of time and RIM shareholders lots of money.

Instead, Microsoft mocks the iPhone and brags that the venerable (to be polite) Windows Mobile will own 40% of the market by 2012.