RIM Acquires Social Calendaring Application Tungle.Me
RIM has picked up another company today—social calendaring application Tungle.Me. The startup taps into your social graph and simplifies the process of finding and connecting with friends and colleagues.
Context & Ripple Effects
Tungle.Me is the latest in a string of RIM software tuck-ins stretching back years: Chalk Media in 2008, Viigo in 2010, and last September's purchase of DataViz's assets. Each added a capability layer — content, feeds, document viewing — to a BlackBerry platform under visible pressure, and this one targets the social graph itself, the territory where RIM's BBM advantage meets rivals' broader networks.
The timing matters: Mike Lazaridis confirmed QNX-powered 'super phone' BlackBerrys at CES in January, and RIM has since conceded it needs Android app support on the PlayBook to check the 'lots of apps' box against competing ecosystems. A social-calendaring team in-house is cheap insurance for making the next-generation devices feel differentiated beyond raw app counts.
First-order effects
- Tungle's team and its social-graph scheduling technology move inside RIM, folding a standalone cross-platform service into the BlackBerry software stack just as the company prepares its first QNX-based phones.
- RIM gains a differentiator it currently lacks: calendar coordination that works across ecosystems, useful for a vendor that has slipped out of the top five phone makers as of Q4 2010 and needs reasons to stay on the platform.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Google already ship tightly integrated calendar and contact experiences with their platforms, so RIM buying the capability rather than building it compresses its catch-up timeline — and raises the bar for what BlackBerry's native PIM suite must ship with on QNX devices.
- For developers, another independent BlackBerry-adjacent startup has been absorbed, reinforcing the perception — sharpened by a developer publicly quitting PlayBook development over RIM's submission process earlier this year — that building standalone businesses atop RIM's platform ends in acquisition or exit.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, smartphone competition shifts from hardware specs and app counts toward who owns the social and productivity layer — contacts, calendars, messaging — pushing every platform holder toward serial acqui-hires to assemble that stack.
- RIM's acquisition cadence effectively functions as an admission that internal platform development alone cannot close the gap with rival ecosystems, a structural posture that shapes how the company approaches its QNX relaunch.
The trend: Mobile platforms are competing less on device hardware than on owned social-and-productivity software layers, with lagging vendors like RIM assembling them through rapid tuck-in acquisitions.