Research In Motion (RIM) has signed an agreement with Motorola, the number two mobile phone vendor, to enable specific handsets to connect to BlackBerry services, including support for both BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Web Client. The company signed a similar deal with the number one selling mobile phone vendor, Nokia, back in 2002.

While the details about RIM's agreement with Motorola haven't been made available, it is further evidence of RIM's strategy of offering its wireless services to devices and platforms beyond its own BlackBerry handhelds.

Like with a BlackBerry handheld, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, for example, will probably be able to push email directly to the Motorola phones. Traditionally, mobile device users need to request data and email be pulled down from a server. With push, email is sent directly to the device. This push capability is an important reason RIM recently surpassed one million subscribers.

Earlier this month, wireless carrier Siemens AG inked a deal to offer RIM's BlackBerry email and data solutions on its mobile phones. As a result, Siemens' mobile phones will be able to connect to email and corporate data applications via RIM's BlackBerry solutions.

RIM's deals with Motorola and Siemens are the latest examples of the company's efforts to expand the reach of its synchronization solutions to other platforms. Other deals include one with T-Mobile, which plans to offer BlackBerry services later this year for the MDA II Pocket PC Phone, and the Sony Ericsson P900 and Nokia 6820 smartphones, which are both Symbian-based.

RIM has also signed similar agreements with O2, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and PalmSource. All of these deals aim to deliver BlackBerry email support to these companies’ devices and platforms. By partnering with RIM, these vendors hope to improve the chances of the entry of their platforms into the enterprise market.

In addition, many enterprises that already use BlackBerry Enterprise Server and those that are thinking about installing it don't want to be limited to one handheld solution. In some cases, it just isn't practical to only support BlackBerry when there are so many more Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm OS PDAs and smartphones out there. Allowing these enterprises to deploy other platforms gives RIM an additional selling point for its corporate access solutions.