RIM Losing on-deck Nokia support, EAS to become Industry Standard?

With all the innovation going on, you have to ask your self why we are still using middleware when it comes to getting our PIM info. Jason Langridge sees this and sheds some light on the subject in his blog. Companies like RIM and GoodLink depend on you going through them in order to get your info. Palm and Nokia are wising up and are treating their services like a scene from Scarface. They’re cutting out the middle man.

This can be done because Microsoft Exchange is opening up and letting devices talk directly to it more fluently. Nokia is joining the group of companies removing the middle man and launching the E71 without a BlackBerry client. With Mail for Exchange and Active Sync on many devices, companies can now skip the middle man and go directly to the source. Palm realized this and got some swagger when RIM's NOC went down earlier this year, touting their own EAS support. ...And we all know that the iPhone now supports EAS natively as well.

So with BlackBerry Connect losing out to EAS on the 'out-of-box' set of software, is RIM's solution on the path to no longer being the industry standard for mobile email?