Should RIM Support Apple & Android?Should RIM Support Apple & Android?

3:25 PM -- BlackBerry launched its latest attempt to take on Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), Android, and others in the smartphone market today with the BlackBerry Torch. Heavy Reading senior consultant Berge Ayvazian, however, suggests that the Canadian vendor can best maintain its dominant position in the mobile enterprise by actually opening up its BES server software so that businesses can support other smartphones with the wireless email and application software.

"My view is that RIM is making a mistake to not support the iPhone and Android with its BES server software," Ayvazian told me in a phone conversation this afternoon. "They should keep control on the enterprise side by adding support for other devices."

Ayvazian says that end users' buying up other smartphones that the BlackBerry server doesn't support, like the iPhone, is pushing businesses to consider other ways to support their mobile workforce or forcing business people to carry two devices.

"They're driving the enterprise to a Google-type cloud-based solution where all smartphones are equal," Ayvazian says.

If RIM has intentions of opening up the BlackBerry Connect software so that other cellphones could be supported, however, the company hasn't said yet. Instead the company is keeping a proprietary hand on the rudder with the Torch launch. (See RIM Sings Torch Song.)

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile