Oh – now that makes more sense. After rumors got out that RIM was toiling away at Flash and Silverlight for the BlackBerry browser, we were a bit perplexed. That would imply a whole new browser was in the works, and RIM’s about as good at making browsers as I am at building card houses whilst myself and the cards are covered in butter. Turns out, they’re not the ones making it.
Torch Mobile, makers of the Iris browser for Windows Mobile, has just announced that they’ve been purchased by RIM for an undisclosed amount. They outright say that they will “now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry® platform.”, so expect the BlackBerry browsing experience to get a whole lot less painful in the near future.
[Via BoyGenius]
This and the optical trackpad just may be the two things that move me into a top-end RIM product in the near future… (especially if it is a Bold-like CDMA unit with those and WiFi on Sprint)