Blackberry gets the news

RESEARCH IN MOTION has written a cheque for the Toronto-based software outfit Viigo.

The acquired company, which has about 50 employees, makes a popular application for RIM's Blackberry smartphones that aggregates politics, sports and weather information in one application.

CEO Mark Ruddock said in a statement that his team has joined RIM's global organisation and will continue to develop its real-time content delivery system.

Viigo was worth about $10 million and might have been creating a similar application for the Iphone when RIM bought the outfit.

The company was also starting to move into the enterprise and e-commerce markets, and it is thought that these might be useful for RIM.

The outfit was started with seed capital from the Blackberry budget. It would seem that RIM had its eye on the company for some time and the last thing it wanted was to let Apple have access to the technology. µ