“Apple has launched its new iPhone decisively into BlackBerry’s business market, by improving security, e-mail and allowing third-party software to run on its platform. But this is not a challenge Research in Motion, maker of BlackBerry, is going to take lightly. Its most consumer-friendly phone yet, the Bold, could launch next week, while a multimillion dollar marketing campaign, ‘Life on BlackBerry,’ sees it make a more determined push beyond its corporate core,” Tim Bradshaw and Rob Minto reports for The Financial Times.
MacDailyNews Take: Besides blowing multimillions of dollars on marketing, here’s what RIM will be doing in the near future:
• Pretending that antique technology wrapped in an iPhone-like exterior is innovation
• Talking up physical keyboards over touchscreen keyboards until they finally produce a device with a rudimentary touchscreen keyboard to tout
• Like every other mobile device company and non-iPhone carrier, totally ignore and never mention Multi-Touch™, especially vs. their single-touch-screen offerings
• Trying to keep their central email server online up in Canada
• Watching their market share lead erode dramatically
Bradshaw and Minto continue, “Apple has set a target of selling 10m iPhone 3G devices worldwide, which could be tough in a weakening consumer environment.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple will easily sell significantly more than a mere 10 million iPhone units in 2008. iCal us. (Note: the actual goal is 10 million iPhones – original model and iPhone 3G – sold in 2008, not “10m iPhone 3G devices” as Bradshaw and Minto incorrectly report.)
Bradshaw and Minto continue, “Richard Windsor, analyst at Nomura, said BlackBerry’s attempt to crack the consumer market has ‘not been particularly competitive… The Apple experience on their device is second to none. Rim has a lot of work to do to catch up’ in scaling up its manufacturing and distribution capability as well as design, he added.”
Bradshaw and Minto report, “Nokia’s senior vice-president of devices, Søren Petersen, has been scathing about BlackBerry’s consumer push. ‘Selling to women is about more than making it pink,’ he told the FT in June, referring to a colourful edition of the BlackBerry Pearl, its device that’s most like a regular phone. But he also dismissed the iPhone’s security and business features as ‘not worthy of discussion.'”
“Andrew Brown, analyst at Strategy Analytics, thinks Nokia has failed to capitalise. ‘Apple is in a good position to slaughter the lot of them because they’ve kept it pretty simple and accessible,'” Bradshaw and Minto report. “Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive, has claimed Apple made $30m (£15m) from 60m downloads in the first month that the iPhone was available.”
More in the full article here.
As usual, Nokia sounds bitter, defensive, and scared, as well they should be. And, RIM simply does not have the chops to compete effectively with Apple, so they will try to make their inferior hardware look like iPhones, couple it with their totally outclassed software, and hope to market their way to an ignorant, nonsustaining user base. Note to RIM et al.: Those who are unable to distinguish between a real iPhone and a pretend one are much more likely to have far less disposable income than those who can.
I think nokias opinion is irrelavent considering their cash cow phones are not in the same market as the iPhone.
“• Trying to keep their central email server online up in Canada”
I don’t know if that can be a valid point from you until Apple achieves it with MobileMess.
• Trying to keep their central email server online up in Canada
“I don’t know if that can be a valid point from you until Apple achieves it with MobileMess.”
It’s a perfectly valid point: You can email to and from an Apple iPhone without using MobileMe at all, but all BlackBerry email goes through RIM’s central server that has gone out in the past, stopping all BlackBerry email.
Jobs has not claimed $30 Million from iPhone App sales. That is speculation from Wall Street analysts.
Jobs has reported 60 Million iPhone App downloads since July 11.
One advantage RIM has: You’ll probably be able to pick up a BlackBerry Bold without standing in line or placing an order with delivery sometime in the future. C’mon, Apple … get enough of these units out there for everyone who wants one.
Just look at all the competitors commercials, especially the latest BB fake baby talking gag – tired, old tricks, not targeting their customer base, shows nothing about the phone – the same attention is paid to their technology. Too bad the supporting players like Novell GroupWise don’t care to wise up to a better mobile platform.
Wow, that thing looks bleeding edge! Look at that sleek plastic keyboard! Plus a color screen and a joystick! Sign me up!
(btw I’m posting from 2004)
I thought Nokia made those plastic cell phones for kids that are filled with candy. What do they have in common with the iPhone’s target market?
I still don’t understand the animosity towards RIM.
“Trying to keep their central email server online up in Canada”
You know… this will be a lot easier now with RIM customers leaving for iPhone…
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Let’s look at it this way: people who buy RIM or Nokia phones today are a critical part of Apple’s future success. As soon as their two year plans run out, they, realizing they’ve been duped, will come crawling over to the iPhone, generating sustainable sales for Apple over many quarters into the future….
@ Sir Gill Bates
“I still don’t understand the animosity towards RIM.”
It probably isn’t real animosity. Like me, they probably feel some admiration for RIM but a lot more admiration for what Apple is accomplishing. The name of the game is that a new guy with bright innovation comes on the block and all the old guys are caught with their pants down shouting, “what happened, where did he come from?”
chanM,
I understand what you are saying, since I too admire all of Apple’s accomplishments. It just seems like I never heard anything bad about RIM until the iPhone came out. Now people are putting them in the same class as MicroSoft, and I simply don’t think that is very fair.
I gotta admit, I think it’s going to be close. I’m not sure Apple “will easily” sell 10 Million iPhones. I think they’ll make it, but I’m not sure they’ll blow away estimates.
So far this year, Apple has sold “over” 3,420,000 iPhones. That’s 1,703,000 between January and March, 717,000 between April and June, and “over 1,000,000” in the opening weekend of the iPhone 3G. This is a little over 1/3rd of their goal and that was 7 months into the year. Apple needs to sell 6,580,000 phones before December 31st.
One thing I’m curious about is whether Apple’s new deal with AT&T is going to hurt them at Christmas. One of the cool things about the iPhone last Christmas was you could buy one for a friend/relative/stranger. Now, if you buy an iPhone for someone else, you also have to buy them a calling plan (or spend $399). I’m not sure I’m that nice a person.
“It just seems like I never heard anything bad about RIM until the iPhone came out. Now people are putting them in the same class as MicroSoft, and I simply don’t think that is very fair.”
I agree.
Let’s see… BlackBerry locked once in 5 years due to too many e-mails. iPod Touch becomes unusable running Flashlight. Where do I sign up?
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I have nothing against RIM, or Palm for that matter.
But, I don’t like old technology either. As for RIm, I still believe they have the best Mobile Speaker Phone in the world.
And Palm: my last Tungsten bit the dust when it was 15 months old, and I paid Palm another $125 for a refurb from them. That bit the dust 9 months later. Enough for me. I LOVED Palm in the 90’s.
As for me? You bet your a_s I bought a 3G iPhone when it came out July 11th. It’s 10 times the phone I was expecting. It really IS a computer that happens to be a cell phone.
P.S. MDN: I loved your use of the word “chops”
I like the iPhone and some of it’s “Neat Factor” however, it cannot yet replace my Blackberry. My BB Curve is all business, syncs well with my mac and does all of the functions that I need quite well with no fuss. The iPhone is still a toy, yes I know there are some company’s starting to use it but in my eyes it’s still a toy like the Motorola Razr was.
Most of all, it is connected to AT&T;, the worst provider in my area, so for now I will proudly carry my BB and wait for the BB Thunder or Apple to realize that the iPhone needs to be cool, available on other carriers and that things like “Cut and Paste” are necessary in a phone OS.
I won’t give up the functionality and rock solid stability of the BB for the cool factor of the iPhone or any of the other “Cool Phones”.
Rim if you are reading this you could take some lessons from Safari on the iPhone though, I find myself waiting till I have a wifi hotspot and using my iPod Touch instead of the BB…..
so fun to see the fanboys rant on and on to make them feel better disregarding and excusing shortcomings in the iphone. you guys are completely insane to believe RIM has had its best days. ical this, put it on your bulletin board, tattoo it on your body, i don’t care – just rememebr this: RIM will dominate the mobile landscape in the coming years along with Apple. I could educate you on economics and bandwidth capacity, but it would go over your heads. The Blackberry will continue to flourish. Believe it or not, it’s a fact. ok, now you can jump all over me. love to antogonize!
You gotta love the titles that MDN comes up with.
I’ve been on an iPhone since the original a year ago and have the 3G now. I still can’t type as fast as I could on any of my previous 5 blackberrys. And they were a lot snappier than the new FW2.0 on the iPhone. But I would trade back period, web and apps are just too good. I hope Apple fixes the new pauses in address book and the dropped calls with 3G.
Bradshaw and Minto continue, “Apple has set a target of selling 10m iPhone 3G devices worldwide, which could be tough in a weakening consumer environment.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple will easily sell significantly more than a mere 10 million iPhone units in 2008. iCal us.
Umm, MDN even you blew this one. Steve Jobs promised to sell 10 million iPhones by the the end of 2008 not 10 million iPhone 3Gs as Bradshaw and Minto imply.
Only one reason I don’t have an iPhone. The service plan. My brother-in-law works for Sprint so my wife and I are on the employee plan and we get unlimited data and 1500 minutes a month for a combined $54. Kind of hard to drop that. Plus my Centro works ok. I don’t really use it for browsing. Mostly for checking email on the road. And one advantage it has is I can use it as a modem for my laptop. Would I like an iPhone? Sure. But until Sprint gets it or my brother in law changes companies I won’t see one anytime soon.
@ Sir Gill Bates
Maybe you weren’t listening closely enough. Pretty much all of these phone manufacturers RIM included were blasting Apple’s efforts and throwing heavy skepticism on Apples offering before and during generation one launch. I suspect that is where the animousity came from. A standard industry practice is to blast your competitors efforts especially if you are totally out classed until you can make an effort to try and pull even. M$ used to do it all the time.
@Brocktoon,
That’s what the Best Buy deal is for.
As for gift buying, by the time Christmas rolls around, the iPhone might be available legally in enough markets that Apple and AT&T;can go back to at-home activation.