The closest person in scale is probably Microsoft, but by their own admission their technology is behind. And if I had to guess I'd say it's 18 to 24 months behind.

The earnings were a huge positive surprise, and I think it was an okay quarter. I would like to have seen stronger service bookings and more strength on software, but the core brands within software did well. And gross margins were pretty damn good.

In our opinion, the judge's comments were more ominous for RIM than NTP. In the end, we believe both parties have more to lose by waiting for a verdict.

Even with all the bad news surrounding RIM, they have not been able to announce even one major customer that is switching services.

The news is starting to circulate that the pick-up in demand since the settlement has been very large.

It's a very high-stakes poker match. I think what's going on here is that NTP was daring RIM to unveil the workaround to let them know whether or not they actually had one.

This is an extremely positive development for RIM. The settlement basically makes the pre-warning irrelevant. There's a lot of pent-up demand for RIM products, and competitors have not been able to capitalize on this.

As a conservative estimate, we believe this deal could have a total contract value in the $20 million range. The fact that this is a licensing agreement also entails that virtually all of the revenue will flow to the bottom line.

After a string of unfortunate events for RIM, we believe the company has been boosted by the District Court's decision to elongate the final briefing timeline, while the Patent Office expedites its re-examination.

The decision does not come as a surprise and was largely incorporated in the stock already in our opinion.