Reasearch in Motion, authors of the Blackberry software, have announed plans to make it available on phones and devices running Windows Mobile 6. This will provide a "virtual Blackberry" to Windows device users offering email, instant messaging and Blackberry Maps.

The strength of the Blackberry has always been ease of use and tight seamless integration with the hardware being used to run it couled with the end-to-end solution provided by virtue of the server software. It will be interesting to see how this translates to the Windows platform.

It is also questionable whether users of Windows devices would want to use the Blackberry software. On the one hand it could make Windows devices more attractive to ordinary users. On the other hand the applications for Windows devices tend to be more advanced than the Blackberry offerings and it is unlikley that existing users of these would want to move to the Blackberry offerings.