Research In Motion, which gave us the BlackBerry, was once considered the leader in mobile phone technology, creating mobile devices that changed the business world and rapidly propelled the adoption of instant communication.
Yet the company has never won any praise for the design and feel of its phones. And it may be hoping that will change with its acquisition of The Astonishing Tribe, a highly respected interface and design company, which it announced in the RIM blog on Thursday.
David Yach, chief technology officer at RIM, boasted of The Astonishing Tribe's design prowess in the blog post, saying the smaller company would help with the design and development of RIM's smartphones.
The Astonishing Tribe has worked with a number of big-name companies over the past several years, including Fujitsu, Google, Samsung and Motorola, and it says its technology is used in over 470 million devices worldwide. The company definitely takes itself seriously when it comes to user interface design, stating on the "about us" section of its Web site that the company consists of a "growing group of engineers, visual artists and interaction designers who eat, sleep, and breathe user interfaces."
RIM's decision to purchase The Astonishing Tribe is likely a result of pressure from the success of the Apple iPhone. In a report released Wednesday by the Nielsen Company, a market research firm, the Blackberry and iPhone "caught in a statistical dead heat with 27 percent of smartphone market share in the U.S."
But many customers have admitted that they prefer the iPhone due to its simple user interface and design in comparison to many other smartphones in the market today.
One project by The Astonishing Tribe that might have caught RIM's eye is a video the company produced in September showing a concept mobile phone from the year 2014. The concept shows a mobile phone that changes size, layout and shape, and acts as a futuristic alarm clock, e-reader and messaging device.