Research in Motion Ltd. said Thursday it will offer for the first time a Macintosh-based e-mail and calendar application for its BlackBerry handheld devices.

RIM has signed a licensing deal with Information Appliance Associates to offer free downloads of the PocketMac program for BlackBerries, and to later integrate the software with the handhelds, officials with the companies said.

The move deepens RIM’s rivalry against Palm Inc., which for years has provided synchronization software for users of Apple Computer Inc.’s Mac computers with its line of handhelds and Treo smartphones. The Mac OS X operating system even includes a free program called iSync that lets users synch their address and calendar information from their Macs to Palm handhelds.

Source: AP