Quote:
Originally Posted by systm
The iPhone, while a quite nice phone, does what every other TRUE smart phone does. It was magical when it first came out, now it's just a one trick pony that is striving to stay on top. Android, RIM's BlackBerry and the soon to be released Windows 7 Phone(s) are going to be taking away from Apple's market share.
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I would agree with this statement regarding Droid and Win7 based phones, but not regarding Blackberry. Of all the current smart phones on the market, BB is the least functional and is the only one I'd classify as a one trick pony. In fact I'd classify it as borderline obsolete and it will soon be a dying pony if RIM doesn't pull on their innovation panties and come up with a new device in very short order. Despite being essentially nothing more than an email enabled PDA, the BB has survived, basically unchanged, as the defacto smart phone for business applications since it was launched almost a decade ago for two simple reasons:
1) BES integration into MS Exchange
2) corporate inertia towards large scale changes
BB is only just starting to break into the consumer space, and is most failing against the iPhone (and now the Droid's) simply because as a platform it's too focused on business productivity. Since it's introduction it's been basically a glorified Palm Pilot that does over-the-air email/calendar/contacts sync'ing, everything else a smart phone does is a kludge or a hack or both on a BB....... and "everything else" is something which most non-business users care about on at least an equal footing with with email and calendar (probably more). Until RIM manages to innovate a new non-business consumer orientated phone they won't get significant market penetration outside their core area of strength, the corporate enterprise market.
Retaining the corporate market is going to become a major concern for RIM because of one technology: ActiveSync. A true push email/calendar/contacts integration system used to be the sole domain of BES, and it was that mechanism alone that made the BB the ubiquitous corporate device that it currently is. However now that ActiveSync is embedded in Exchange, and included in your Exchange licensing costs unlike BES which is a pricey add-on, it's child's play to set up a true push sync with any iPhone, Droid or Win7 phone. No longer are you tied to a BB if you want your corporate email/calendar/contact, and all the recent survey's I've seen have indicated roughly 7 of 10 current BB users are planning to switch to an iPhone or Droid when their current phone contract expires. When 70% of your customer base is saying they want to switch from your product at their next opportunity, you'd be well advised as a company to sit up and pay attention!
The iPhone, Droid and Win7 phones all have FAR better, more usable interface and RIM's attempt to implement a similar device (the Storm) were not well received because the accuracy of the touch screen was horrible. Similarly finding apps for a Blackberry, surfing the web, etc. are all extremely painful on a BB. While there are certainly hundreds of thousands of meaningless and trival apps for the iPhone there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of really good apps as well. The same be be the case with the Droid once there's been enough time for developers to build unique apps.