Research in Motion (RIM) has purchased the Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish company that by its own admission creates "beautiful user interfaces." Working behind the scenes, TAT's technology has provided custom interfaces for phones produced by Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and others. A small company of around 200 employees, TAT provides a complete software and design stack--everything from the user-interface framework (which it calls TAT Cascades) to the actual user interface designs.
Much of TAT's recent work has been on the Android platform, but it's very unlikely that will continue after the RIM acquisition. As such, the purchase of TAT is as much strategic as it is a move by RIM to buy innovation.

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