RIM's Acquisition of TAT a Thing of Beauty

Research in Motion has announced on its blog the company's acquisition of user interface specialist The Astonishing Tribe, known as TAT.

The Sweden-based TAT makes several well-known and widely used products for mobile device makers, including TAT Home, a custom home screen for the Android market that delivers gesture navigation and 3D widgets, and TAT Cascades, an XML-based UI framework that is running on nearly 500 million mobile devices. TAT claims that its technology is behind the UIs in more than 15 percent of all mobile phones and more than 20 percent of all touch phones shipped in 2010.

The acquisition bodes well for RIM, the makers of BlackBerry smartphones as well as the company's new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer, due in early 2011. The TAT team will be bringing its talents and reputation for creating beautiful, user-friendly interfaces to the BlackBerry platforms that, traditionally, have not been too highly regarded for their emphasis on user experience.