RIM’s Chances Of Grabbing Consumers Better Than Apple’s Push For Corporates?
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) or RIM: who’s got it tougher as the two try to increase sales by branching out into each others traditional customer segments? FT.com takes a look at the efforts so far, and while there is certainly interest in the iPhone among business users, and RIM’s consumer efforts still have a way to go, Nomura analyst Richard Windsor concludes that Apple will have a harder time going corporate than RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) will have breaking into the consumer market.
While Apple has improved security and email on the iPhone, corporates are still wary. Plus, there’s the question of the iPhone’s reliability, whose credibility was damaged over ongoing issues with Apple’s email, calendar and file-sharing service MobileMe. RIM suffers from the opposite problem. Corporates trust its reliability, but its devices are still considered ugly and clunky. The snazzier Blackberry Bold, aimed at consumers, could change this, but so far, RIM hasn’t done such a great job with more consumer friendly functions such as music playing.
Some analysts are even predicting that Apple and RIM will emerge as the two dominant players in the smartphone market, passing by Nokia (NYSE: NOK), which has “failed to capitalize” on its lead, according to Strategy Analytics, Andrew Brown. But Nokia SVP of devices Søren Petersen seems a bit more confident about the company’s efforts. He dismissed Blackberry’s consumer efforts, telling the FT that “selling to women is about more than making [the phone] pink,” which is what RIM had done its Pearl handset. Petersen also waved off iPhone’s security and business features as “not worthy of discussion.”
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Posted In: Gadgets, Companies, Apple, Nokia, RIM, blackberry, iphone
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Comments (4)
Aug 13, 2008 9:04 AM
“This is like deja vu all over again”: How the iPod is going to fail.
I think the only thing left out of your little blog-bite was a quote from Rob Enderle, of Enderle Group (‘The Man and his Dog”)...
Anyhoo.
The very near future is no longer about smartphones (or handset “makers”) but about software-hardware integration. RIM does not have the same depth of knowledge of software engineering as Apple, and has much less experience/savvy with user interface development. Apple will likely deploy specifically developed chips to add to the graphics chips/radio-stacks (e.g. video encoding-decoding) and couple it with its optimized micro OS. RIM is the future has-been…
cheers!
Aug 13, 2008 11:25 AM
Interesting comments. I think the first truly consumer facing Blackberries are the Pearl, and to a lesser extent, the Curve. Both are good-looking and small, and offer the same functionality you expect from all other Blackberries, but with the addition of music players and 2 megapixel cameras. The Bold will definitely step it up!
Aug 15, 2008 9:21 AM
Will also be interesting to see the role that mobile applications play. The FT article talks about the app store, and while that might not bring the corporate user over to the iPhone yet (security, email, and Office interoperability might), an app store, or something like that will bring more consumers over to the Bold or Thunder. You don’t see much discussion about call quality these days, and soon enough it won’t be so much about email and security.
Aug 15, 2008 5:57 PM
“RIM hasn’t done such a great job with more consumer friendly functions such as music playing.”
What’s wrong with the music player on blackberry? I already had all my songs on a microSD card. I popped it into my Blackberry 8830, and was easily able to play my library on my phone, and listen to the songs on my stereo bluetooth headphones. Apple isn’t so good at supporting stereo bluetooth or external media.