All Articles Tagged rim

We’re not surprised. Obviously. Apple plays the product cycle and media hype engines to perfection. Still, it’s interesting to see Electronista’s take, based on ChangeWave data:

A mid-June study from the research group has 14.4 percent of those tracked looking to buy some kind of smartphone within the next 90 days, a record high and a large jump from 11.2 percent in March. Of these, a full 44 percent now plan to buy an iPhone compared to 30 percent just three months earlier.

As the above graph shows, Palm went from 4% to 8%, BlackBerry from 37% to 23%. Android, Nokia, and Windows Mobile weren’t shown

Other device makers likely know this, explaining why we’re seeing so many iPhone-style devices hitting the market. TiPb still thinks it’s more than a set of features, however. Sure, iPod halo and Apple brand help, but in the end the iPhone is all about usability and user experience for the consumer market, and that’s not as easy a task to duplicate.

In a write up nonchalantly titled “Lies, damn lies, statistics, and Apple…“, our good friend Phil Nickinson over at sister-site WMExperts rightly points out that Apple gave Windows Mobile a full on shunning during the WWDC 2009 keynote:

Windows Mobile isn’t even mentioned. Sure, Microsoft hasn’t yet launched its dedicated app store, Windows Marketplace for Mobile. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t stores from which to buy apps – ahem, here’s one – and it’s an insult to all of the developers of the 20,000 Windows Mobile applications available.

Windows 7 did get a mention (and a ribbing, as usual, from OS X head Bertrand Serlet), but in the smartphone space…?

Nothing.

That might seem callous from Apple’s part — but here’s the worse problem for Microsoft: Windows Mobile was missing from a lot of post-WWDC analyst and media commentary as well.

Apple still owns significant smartphone mind-share and the Palm Pre has captured the attention of the blogsphere and, since RIM is holding fast, that’s coming at the expense of Microsoft (and maybe Android, which was last year’s next big thing).

Realistically, with so many platforms now, when someone writes “Apple iPhone and…” “BlackBerry and…” and now “Palm Pre and…” there’s only room for so many others in the sentence, and those places are becoming increasingly competitive.

With Windows Mobile 7 pushed out until 2010, and 6.5 not in consumer hands yet either, and with iPhone 3G S about to hit, things might not be changing any time soon either…

While the iPhone vs. Palm Pre is the current darling of the blogerati (we’re not sure anyone in the mainstream is even aware of it…), we can’t forget that most iconic of rivalries: iPhone vs. BlackBerry. Not when Infoworld has written up the provocatively titled: “Deathmatch: BlackBerry versus iPhone — It’s time for us to bury the BlackBerry and move on to modern mobile — even for e-mail”.

In the massive, 8-page-jump article, the author contends that while the BlackBerry still scores points for security, non-Exchange email, hardware keyboard, and lack of good web browsing (for bosses who don’t want their employees using WebApps), the summation states:

For everyone else, the BlackBerry is yesterday’s mobile messenger, way past its prime and heading toward retirement. The iPhone is light-years ahead of the BlackBerry on almost every count. RIM should be ashamed.

Ouch. We’re sure our friends over at CrackBerry.com would beg to differ, but… ouch.

Can RIM fight back with new devices like the BlackBerry Tour and impending Storm 2, or — like Palm with the Pre and Microsoft with Windows Mobile 7 — will RIM have to “spend time in the desert” and come out with a rebuilt, revamped, new BlackBerry OS for the next wave of mobile computers?

[Thanks to Matt and everyone who sent this in!]

No, we’re not talking about Bono. Sigh. We’re talking about Don Lindsay, who was, according to Apple Insider:

Design Director of the Mac OS User Experience Group, he led what was called the “Mac OS X interface concept project” and directed the design team responsible for the user experience of Mac OS X 10.0 “Cheetah” through Mac OS X 10.3 “Panther,” which included the company’s first-generation of iLife digital lifestyle applications.

From there he was hired away by Microsoft to create — wait for it! — Vista. More specifically, AERO Glass, Flip3D, and Windows Calendar. Redmond start your copiers, indeed.

So what do you get if you copy a copy? Aside from artifacts and banding galore, RIM’s new VP of user experience, it seems. There’s only one problem with this, of course, and it should be obvious to RIM or to anyone who’s seen Vista or the Star Wars prequels.

Great artists need great editors. The best kindergarten teachers know when to pull the paper away from the kids. Steve Jobs is a great editor, a great kindergarten teacher. Word is he would scrutinize the UI down to the pixel level.

Hiring the guy who was already hired away by the other guy doesn’t give you the iPhone. It gives you the Storm. And RIM already learned how that worked out. Vista on the Storm… Good luck with that.

If you’d like a better idea, instead of trying to get the guy Microsoft got from Apple, and trying to dupe the dupe that is Vista, find someone new. Find something new…

Think different!

Our public frenemy number 1, CrackBerry Kevin, tipped us to RIM revealing details of their latest “innovation”, the BlackBerry App Store (and no, we’re not jaded that the company that once said touchscreens were a non-starter is now high-five’ing themselves silly over winning the self-awarded “breakthrough” prize for the Storm’s SurePress at Mobile World Congress — iSigh).

Them new CrackBerry App Store details? (And no, we’re not going to call it the CrApp Store, thanks you very much!) No themes allowed, which are apparently quite popular (not that we non-Jailbroken iPhone owners have any idea what they are, right Apple?). WebApps will be showcased alongside native apps, which is interesting given how WebApps on the iPhone have languished in terms of the Apple spotlight since the iPhone App Store launched.

Unlike Apple’s free SDK or $99 registered SDK with tethering, RIM will charge devs $200 per 10 apps submitted to the store. How the effects free apps (or rejected/re-submitted apps?) is unknown. Like the iPhone App Store, support will be the responsibility of the developer, which some hope will encourage more stable code (and not just less supportive developers).

Also important to remember in all this, however, is that while an iPhone can hold up to almost 16GB of Apps, BlackBerry’s are severely limited — only onboard app storage can be used, after the OS takes its share. We’re talking a 30-100MB at most (and single iPhone Apps can be bigger than that).

So what do we think? Dieter wanted Apple to copy-back the Ovi Store’s recommendation engine. Anything Apple should copy-back from RIM? WebApp category?

This. Is. iPhone JEOPARDY!… Judges Round!

Way back on March 14 we covered some of the bold, bodacious pontifications the CEOh-no’s of Microsoft, RIM, and Palm had made about the iPhone. Quick-on-the-buzzer as always, it’s time once again to go back to our judges and see how they did!

“Why We’re Not Worried about the iPhone” for 100

Ed Colligan:

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Daily Double-Talk

Steve Ballmer:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Final Jeopardy!

“Mike Lazaridis”:

“Talk — all I’m [hearing] is talk about [the iPhone's chances in Enterprise]. I think it’s important that we put this thing in perspective.” [...] “Apple’s design-centric approach [will] ultimately limit its appeal by sacrificing needed enterprise functionality. I think over-focus on one blinds you to the value of the other.” [...] “Apple’s approach produced devices that inevitably sacrificed advanced features for aesthetics.”

And to top it all off:

THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”

Judges?

10 Million iPhones sold in 2008, almost 7 million in Q4 alone. More units of a single SKU moved than all RIM SKUs combined, and more than (we think!) WinMob licenses as well. 200,000,000 App Store downloads, 5500 Apps available, and now being copied by Microsoft, Google, and RIM. Form factor and touch-centricity copied by both Microsoft-OEMs and RIM (who’s also introducing a no-keyboard Blackberry Storm!). And Palm? Er… Anyone heard from Palm lately?

And the Winner Is!

None of the players today.

For the Pundit Round, be sure to check out Daring Fireball’s awesome set of links, and MacDailyNew’s Compendium of iPhone Naysayers.

[Here's a bonus TiPb of the Iceberg for you this week, courtesy of the humongous news coming out of Apple's Quarterly Conference Call]

Tuesday’s news that the iPhone has been selling well stupendously well, in case you weren’t paying attention, was really big. It’s tough to express how big. Some of the bullet points:

• They exceeded their sales goal of 10 million iPhones in 2008 already, with the holiday season still ahead of them
• They sold nearly 7 million iPhones in three months.
• They sold more iPhones than RIM sold BlackBerrys (yes, that’s the proper plural spelling)
• Based on revenue from iPhones, Apple was the #3 cellphone maker last quarter, behind only Nokia and Samsung.
• They achieved all this in 15 months.

Now, there are caveats to these numbers: there was pent-up demand for the iPhone 3G so these numbers almost surely won’t hold; RIM’s sales were depressed because of delays releasing the BlackBerry Bold. Don’t let these caveats mislead you, though, what Apple did with the iPhone 3G in the past three months is unprecedented in the mobile industry, it was pretty much unprecedented in any industry.

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No, it’s not Deja Vu. No one has reset the Matrix (we think…) It’s just another Apple follow-along. To paraphrase Bertrand Serlet: Waterloo, start your photocopiers!

Not content with merely iCloning the iPhone look with the Bold or touchscreen with the Storm, during the Blackberry Developer Conference today, RIM basically repeated Apple’s iPhone SDK Roadmap Event announcements from back in March, note for note.

App Store? Check. Push Notification Service? Gotcha. Integrated Development Environment? Why not! iFund? App-solutely!

Scott Forstall, was that just the sound of you flinging your iPhone 4G through the screen of your 30″ DisplayPort Cinema Display? I think it was.

Check out the live blog now at Crackberry.com, and if you miss it, they’re sure to have all the news and roundups shortly thereafter.

Pop quiz. You announce the hawt new tic-tac-tile handset in May for a Summer release yet Summer comes and goes, and one of the largest carriers in one of the largest geekphone markets in the world (that’d be AT&T in the USA) keeps rejecting your firmware — over and over again.

Do you push (ha!) back and tell AT&T to first fix their 3G networks, which many now believe amount to the old 2G networks with rabbit-ears welded on top? Do you tell them to shove it up their UTMS and pour all your efforts in the risky virtual keyboard you’re hoping will take Verizon by storm (ho!)? Or do you try to shift focus to the device that forced you to take the risky virtual keyboard risk in the first place, the device that hasn’t yet touched (hee!) your market share, but sucked every inch of mind share out of your smartphone space?

What do you do? Well, if you’re internet dead-pan funny man Mike Lazaridis, CEO of RIM and maker of the sales-leading Blackberry business-monster, do we really even have to ask?

Says Lazaridis (via Crackberry.com):

“There’s great scrutiny, as you might know, on that network and a certain device. So I guess everyone wants to be sure on every last test.” [...] Lazaridis appeared confident that the Bold would not be subject to the iPhone’s problems. “We’re very meticulous about what our product does.”

You mean like after Crackberry Kevin brought a Rogers Bold to New York?

Jump off the plane at La Guardia, and within 48 hours of roaming on AT&T my BlackBerry Bold randomly rebooted itself 5 times, dropped 6 calls while talking (and 3 dropped after only one ring before I could answer) and at one point gave me an Invalid SIM Card error for no reason at all (soft reboot fixed it). Furthermore, my battery life tanked - the Bold was regularly switching between 3G and Edge which I think soaked back a lot of the juice. All in all, I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t the same phone that I was using when I boarded the plane, and the only thing that changed was the Network.

So, er, yeah… What’s causing them delays again?

The iPhone shook up a very complacent smartphone world, but if we think it exists in a vacuum, if we think the other big players won’t respond (no matter how embarrassingly long it might take them), and if we don’t hope that they do — hardcore style — to prevent Apple from one day getting just as complacent, then we’re not doing our jobs as bloggers or consumers.

With that, splinter-like, in mind, witness RIM launching the Blackberry Thunder, their first touch screen device. If you ever wondered how brilliantly Apple handled the release of the iPhone, from Steve pulling it from his pocket to the first videos and commercials, wonder no more. RIM’s shows us by way of terrible — near Microsoft’ian — example, how badly that could have gone… (Though Mike Lanman certainly makes a convincing Doby to Lazaridis’ Gollum…). Couldn’t have hired them Virgin folks again?

We’re still not sure about the whole-screen’s-a-button approach. And the newly launched GDGT podcast is right on when they say RIM needs new software and they need it now (and tell a very funny story about how RIM’s co-CEO really doesn’t get that… scary…)

Head on over to Crackberry.com to watch the full video.