RIM will be putting pre-installed IM software (to hook into AIM and Yahoo!) on their devices. How do people think this will affect the third party software vendors such as PDAapps (Verichat?)

http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?t=4676

Not very much, unless they offer support for other Instant Messengers like MSN, and Jabber. Not everyone uses AIM or Yahoo.

I'm still excited about getting a blackberry version of AIM, hopefully I won't be charged extra for it.

It's great! It will introduce people to basic IM on BlackBerry, and be a stepping stone to superior IM software too;

I think it won't hurt PDAapps in the long term -- and actually help them, because sometimes people may be looking for superior alternatives.

"Dangit, why can't I just hit Enter to send IM's"
"Why can't I be logged onto both AIM and Yahoo simultaneously?"
"MSN is missing!"
"Notifications are not as configurable as I want them to be!"
"I want to multitask 2 conversations simultaneously at one hotkey!"
etc.

Verichat solves all the above problems, for example...
(I am comparing to the instant messaging client installed on 7100t's)

RIM is doing a great thing by making BlackBerries more popular and consumer-friendly, however, I don't view it as the demise of third party instant messaging software. That's why some of us pay $30 to buy Trillian (For Desktop PC's) from www.trillian.cc to replace MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, into one software program. Unless RIM does a miracle of making the software 100 times better than the 7100t instant messaging software, I'm one of those heavy users who still need to use third party software...

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