Blackberry maker says rivals are exploiting its troubles in India

SMARTPHONE MAKER Research in Motion (RIM) has accused its rivals of trying to profit from its negotiations in India.

RIM has been under pressure from India's security agencies to provide access to its Blackberry messaging system, however the firm said that its competitors have been "suggesting or implying" that Indian authorities singled it out. RIM claims that its rivals, namely Nokia, Motorola, Apple, Sony Ericsson, HTC, Cisco, Google, HP, Microsoft, Samsung and Good Technology all use the same encryption technology and yet were not collared by the authorities.

In a statement to the India Times, RIM said, "Some of RIM's competitors have attempted to compound and profit from the confusion by suggesting or implying that RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server software will be singled out by Indian regulators."

Although there's no doubt RIM has caught the short end of the stick, the Indian government has said that it will look into encryption used by Google and Skype. However it has yet to instigate any action against the two firms, whereas it has publicly dragged RIM through the mud.

RIM's Blackberry messaging services are core to the firm's profitability and, while it is rare for the company to point the finger at its competitors, it risks losing a major selling point for its Blackberry smartphones.

It seems that as security agencies all over the world try to compromise RIM's privacy measures, the firm has decided not to go quietly, taking others down with it. µ