When Microsoft sets its sights on a market segment, look out. It'll happen, sooner or later.

I've been using a whole bunch of the latest mobile phones recently to test them and see how well they'll work for business use. The fact of the matter is, most of them pale in comparison to the Blackberry devices. Blackberries are great tools. All the others are great gadgets. At work, I need a great tool more than a great gadget.

But what I really want is the best of both worlds. Push email, real-time sync on email, calendar, and all that. Lookups live over the air from my company's active directory. MP3 player, phone, voice recorder, MP3 and poly ring-tones... and the RIM form factor works great - he typical PDA-phone running Windows Mobile is a little too goofy and unusable - especially in the keyboard area. Blackberry keyboards work great - the palmOne and PocketPC keyboards I have used - well, they just suck.

From Engadget, with reference to an article at Internet Week, word about the upcoming Windows Mobile 2005 and how Microsoft likely intends to compete with RIM's Blackberry devices - and server.

This will raise eyebrows and - if the Windows Mobile devices can be improved to be a better tool and less gadgety - it's entirely possible they could take away a lot of the market currently sufficiently served only by RIM...

Microsoft wants to kill the Blackberry dead with Windows Mobile 2005

If their recent deals to license their ActiveSync technology to Nokia, Symbian, and palmOne are any indication, Microsoft is working hard to steadily encircle the Blackberry with the next version of Windows Mobile, aka Windows Mobile 2005 aka Magneto. The plan? CRN reports that Microsoft is finally going to unveil Windows Mobile 2005 at the Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference in Las Vegas next month, and that they’re going to be taking a serious swipe at RIM by adding Blackberry-like support for push email and live content updating to Windows Mobile-powered Pocket PCs and Smartphones. The CrackBerry’s pretty damn entrenched, but Microsoft knows a thing or two about dislodging a market-dominating competitor, and so will be reviving a familiar tactic: to compete with RIM’s server product they’re going to be giving away their Exchange 2003 Server Pack 2 update, which adds support for push, for free.