RIM to Install Yahoo Services on BlackBerry Handhelds

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6:20 am on April 6, 2006 | Category: Web Services, Mobile Devices, Email, Messaging

Research In Motion has come to an agreement with Yahoo to preinstall several of the internet giant’s web offerings on future BlackBerry devices.

The deal involves such Yahoo services as search, email, instant messaging, and news, which will start being rolled out on RIM devices in about two weeks.

“Our job is to create a rich user experience for our community so that they want to use Yahoo on it, and hopefully we create such a rich experience for the Yahoo community that they want to buy a BlackBerry and run Yahoo on it,” said RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie in an interview yesterday.

The two companies already have a limited partnership, but didn’t give a monetary value of this extension. Yahoo Connected Life senior vice president, Marco Boerries would only describe the new deal to be “significant.”

“We have 200 million mail users worldwide, and we’re using that user base of Yahoo to connect them to the premier device today,” Boerries commented.

There is no doubt that this is a big victory in Yahoo’s quest to extend its reach beyond the Personal Computer. The web giant has already managed to land similar deals with Nokia and Motorola, and is working on a partnership with Cingular Wireless.

For RIM, however, this deal could be seen by some as a conflict of interest. After all, the wireless device maker already has an agreement to preinstall the Google Talk instant messaging solution on its future devices.

This could be a bit of a let down for Google, but ultimately, having access to two IM platforms is better than one, and users will likely appreciate the increased level of choice.