Motorola has bought Good Technology for an undisclosed sum. Good is RIM's chief rival for corporate mobile messaging - the two have a bitter history of legal battles - and claims 12,000 corporate accounts. Terms of the deal were not disclosed; Good is privately held and does not disclose earnings information.

The move follows the trend of handset manufacturers snapping up horizontal vendors to build a vertical applications stack. Nokia snapped up Intellisync, which majors on mobile email, last year.

Given Palm's increasing dependence on Microsoft, it's not as alarming as it might have been. Motorola unsuccessfully tried to acquire PalmSource, which makes the PalmOS, last year. Motorola's stewardship of the CodeWarrior compiler should give businesses which depend on rival handsets some confidence too. After Motorola acquired Metrowerks, it has continued to support versions for a variety of platforms - including Palm and Symbian.®

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• Good to ship Domino push email tool next month (26 June 2006)
• Visto claims Good done bad (1 February 2006)
• Exclusive Good Technology confirms layoffs (13 September 2005)
• Good Tech touts over-the-air PDA set-up (7 December 2004)
• Good Technology settles with Lawsuits in Motion (28 March 2004)
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• RIM unleashes more lawyers on Good (12 July 2002)
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