BlackBerry holding company Research In Motion (RIM) has reportedly acquired the Dublin-based social software company NewBay. NewBay provides digital content services to operators and device manufacturers, enabling them to deliver content experiences across connected devices the likes of smartphones, PCs, tablets as well as smart TVs.

Besides digital content services NewBay also offers cloud-based services including DropBox competitor LifeCache SyncDrive, which is a comprehensive, easy to employ solution that allows users to sync and share multimedia content across multiple web-connected devices.

Obtaining the company’s cloud-access software seems to be the leading motivation for this acquisition, as the Canadian smartphone and tablet maker aims to remain competitive against mounting competition from Google and its web-based apps and Apple with its newly unveiled iPhone and iCloud services.

 

 

RIM also recently launched a few new cloud-based services of its own to assist businesses to secure, manage and control BlackBerry smartphones in the cloud. These include BlackBerry Protect that helps individual users, as well as small office and home office users to secure and protect their smartphones. BlackBerry Management Center enables companies to centrally manage and secure BlackBerry smartphones as well as a cloud-based version of the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), which in turn allows enterprise customers to deploy and manage BlackBerry smartphones in the cloud.

Although the financial terms of this deal was not disclosed, RIM reportedly paid $100 million to acquire the company.  

 

In related news RIM also recently reported dreary Q2 results for the three month period that ended on 27 August 2011 and whilst BB mobile devices are very popular locally, their market  share in developed regions like the US is in the decline, as a recent Nielsen survey illustrates.