If I was in charge of strategy at Microsoft I'd have doubled down on WP7 for the enterprise market - the company that brought the enterprise their OS, their Office suite, their .NET dev framework and even their little-loved Exchange server really ought to be able to steal huge chunks of market share from RIM. Even if the actual tangible connections between the products are minimal, MS ought to have had a more buzzword-laden pitch which appeals to enterprise decision makers more than "actually, it's really easy to develop for"

Agreed. There's a big market the android and ios fans seem to be ignoring a bit - small/medium businesses with a need for mobile devices and custom apps. The iOS "100 device limit" is pretty annoying and trying to deploy a custom add via 'ad-hoc' is certainly not a simple process (yet?) HPalm could/should be targeting SMBs and developers with an inexpensive tablet that is easy to write for. A $299 price point for a webOS tablet would be fantastic - JS-based development, web-based deployment, low-cost devices, etc. It's a pipe-dream right now, though, because everyone seems to still be focusing on "consumer-focused app stores".

Prediction: Apple will probably quietly introduce SMB-focused changes in the next year to make it stupidly simple to create custom apps and distribute to iOS devices outside of the App Store, then everyone else will spend 3 years chasing that angle. :/

I'm not sure if that will do any good - you see Blackberrys are killer on messaging not apps. The answer to the Blackberry question is more server-side than client-side.

I know your point was enterprise IT, but allow me to illustrate with a consumer example. The same reasoning applies.

Here in India, I see most of the hip young crowd carrying Blackberrys. Note that unlocked, grey-market iPhones are available in India at not-too-deterring prices. But Blackberrys are defacto, and all you see people doing is message, message, message.

We have some of the rock bottom rates on calls and SMS - yet you can buy a fixed-rate Blackberry messenger subscription at nearly every service provider in India which lets you do unlimited group messaging (irrespective of domestic or international). I think you can also group-message a certain number of multimedia items.

Now that is something that not even Apple has cracked. The system is seamless.

<begin prediction consumer> The only competition to Blackberry in the hip-messaging market will come with the Facebook phone which will seamlessly integrate the mobile angle to the Facebook Messaging platform. </end prediction consumer>

<begin prediction enterprise> R.I.M can only be broken by the final integration of Google Voice, Gizmo5, Slide/Disco and some form of video chat into Android. The notification-bar on Android is simply custom built for messaging notifications. </end prediction enterprise>

I'd say you've hit on the one reason that RIM hasn't actually died yet. :-) They really seem to be coasting along on that single advantage, which does not look good for the company's long-term outlook.

"ease up on the consumer focus" sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

It was for IBM, by abandoning trying to compete with DELL selling zero margin laptops to home users and sticking to selling $Bn systems to $Bn clients for $Bn they have a recipe for making $Bn

IBM? Isn't that the company who gifted the entire 'Personal' computer market to Microsoft and Intel?

This is Palm we're talking about. I don't know about you, but when I hear "Palm", I immediately think of people in suits and ties squinting at little screens to see where their next meetings are. Palm traditionally sold products to business people.

If memory serves, before RIM moved in, Palm owned the enterprise handheld market. They could do it again if they tried.