Palm failed at becoming a software company, simply because they are worse at releasing their next-generation operating system than Microsoft! Seriously, “Cobalt” is still not available for real development and deployment, nor will it ever.

Stay a step ahead of Microsoft and keep doing what they are good at, mobile data communications. Don’t rest on your mobile email laurels, but keep innovating, keep pushing to find, develop, and deploy mobile data services that we need and RIM will continue to succeed.

Don’t worry about the hardware, others will provide that for them.

However, while they are doing this, they can also do much to eat into Treo sales if they only release a BB with camera, memory slot, and multimedia capabilities.

RIM needs to avoid the fate of, ironically, Palm, which at one time was the big story in PDAs. They lost out to the Microsoft juggernaut, largely because they fell behind in cutting edge features. Of course, remember that Palm at one time thought it could license its OS and make most of its money that way. Well, we see how well that played out.

Ultimately, RIM needs to keep doing what made it so popular in the first place: stay ahead of the market and keep giving the market superior goods.