Non-iPad Mobile News Items Worth ReadingNon-iPad Mobile News Items Worth Reading

Apple may be dominating headlines this week, but there's plenty else to read about. RIM delivered a disappointing earnings report, Palm has some economics it wants to share with you, Skyfire has an Android browser in development, Google's Buzz gets a minor facelift, and LinkedIn connects with BlackBerry.RIM

Long-time U.S. mobile industry champion Research In Motion is suddenly not looking so great. Its recent quarterly report was a major disappointment, despite reasonably good sales. Revenue climbed to $4.08 billion, but that was shy of the $4.31 billion forecast by Wall Street. Subsequently, RIM's shares took a hit, dropping $5.49, or 7.4%, to $68.48 yesterday afternoon.

Part of the problem is fierce competition in the North American market. Apple and Google's Android platforms are eating RIM's business lunch, of late, and RIM has yet to field a worthy competitor to the newer smartphones. Both its hardware and software are aging rapidly, and RIM needs to catch up. Quick.

Palm

Verizon Wireless dropped the cost of Palm's Pre Plus and Pixi Plus yesterday. Despite what appears to be a fire sale, Palm tried to spin the positive. Palm spokesperson Alwx Hunter emailed me and said, "Buy a Verizon Palm Pre Plus for $49 or Pixi Plus for $29 and you can turn your WiFi only iPad into a 3G-enabled Verizon iPad without any monthly data fee. A savings of $490 over the next 12 months ($130 on the 3G model and $30 a month on the AT&T service). No April Fools." Based on that bit of Palm-onomics, you'll save enough to actually buy an iPad.

Skyfire

Remember how Skyfire bought kolbysoft in February? Well, it's putting the acquisition to good use already. It recently announced that it is signing up alpha testers of a new browser for the Android platform. Kolbysoft made a WebKit-based browser for the Android platform called Steel. The alpha for Skyfire on Android is extremely limited, so if you're a alpha-(fe)male, I'd hurry and get signed up in a hurry.

Google Buzz

Google made some marginal improvements to its Buzz social networking service this week. Basically, it changed the way lengthy conversations appear when users open Buzz. All comments used to be opened at once, creating a monolithic tower of comments under one story that dominated the entire page. Now, comments are automatically collapsed into groups. Not the biggest improvement in the world, but hey, it's something.

LinkedIn for BlackBerry

Last, but not least, it's worth noting that LinkedIn has developed a native application for the BlackBerry platform. The application will let users make connections, view network updates, respond to messages, and send/view invitations from their handsets. It is limited to devices running OS version 4.3 and up. If you're a LinkedIn and BlackBerry user, it's probably worth making the connection.