RIM, the company behind the iconic Blackberry line of smartphones is rumored to be hiring YOU i Labs, an Ontario-based design firm that helped develop the front-end user experience for Taiwan’s HTC. My sources in the mobile design industry have indicated that a deal was in the works between the two companies. Initially it seemed that RIM was going to buy YOU i Labs, but in the end it turned out to be a significant partnership between the two companies.
The deal would be a boost for RIM, which has been focusing more on improving the user experience on its devices. RIM, last December, bought The Astonishing Tribe or TAT, a Swedish UI design firm to help improve tablet and smartphone UI design. YOU i Labs develops user experience and interface technologies for mobile devices of all kinds including tablets, smartphones and other mobile electronics. The company boasts that nearly 500 million devices are running software developed by the company.
HTC, had used Sense UI as a way to to stand out in a marketplace full of similar-looking Android devices. I have been a big fan of HTC Sense and have applauded their desire to stand out from the crowd, whether through Sense or through their investments in different companies or their outright acquisitions of applications and services that enhance their platform. HTC recently unveiled the OpenSense SDK, a tool that will allow developers to write applications on top of its Sense UI. My colleague Ryan Kim reported that “this is part of a larger rollout of HTCdev, a program aimed at supporting developers by providing tools and resources.”
RIM, which now makes the Playbook tablet, has been trying to develop a unique user experience to go along with its messaging strengths. YOU i Labs also works closely with Teknision, a Taiwanese company that designs the Playbook UI. Bolstering its user experience is a good move for the company which has been increasingly feeling the pressure from rivals, Apple’s iOS devices and Google’s Android OS based device ecosystem. According to Gartner, RIM’s worldwide smartphone market share in the first quarter dropped to 12.9 percent from 19.7 percent a year earlier.
In a recent presentation, Jason Flick, the founder of You i Labs talked about the emergence of what he calls the Era of the Intimate User Interface.
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