Symbian Succumbs to Microsoft or vice versa?

WSJ: So finally, Microsoft Licenses Technology For E-Mail to Rival Symbian.

Microsoft Corp. has licensed an e-mail technology to its biggest rival in the cellphone-software market, Symbian Ltd., in the latest sign of how intensely the cellphone industry is wooing businesspeople who send and receive e-mail on their handsets.

The deal will allow handsets running Symbian's software to automatically send and receive e-mails from accounts managed by Microsoft's Exchange software, which is popular with corporations.

The agreement, which follows a similar deal with top cellphone maker Nokia Corp., of Finland, last month, is designed to boost sales of Microsoft Exchange and reduce the lure of BlackBerry mobile e-mail technology, made by Research In Motion Ltd., Waterloo, Ontario.

While helping Microsoft Exchange, the agreement has a catch for another Microsoft division: cellphone software. One of Microsoft's major advantages over London-based Symbian, which is owned by a group of leading cellphone makers, is that handsets running Microsoft's software tend to work better with the Exchange e-mail system -- and that advantage appears to be undermined by the new licensing agreement.

Now this helps level the Mobile Enterprise playing field. In a strange way, this agreement helps both Microsoft and Symbian as the article states. Is this the beginning of the end of BlackBerry's solo reign of the mobile enterprise market?? I wonder....