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Smartphone Battle Is Shaping Up As RIM Vs. Apple
TeknoFin notes a piece in the NYTimes on the fight RIM finds itself in as the smartphone market shifts to a consumer focus, impelled by the iPhone. For the last 10 years RIM has dominated a smartphone market consisting mainly of email-obsessed corporate professionals. Analysts wonder if RIM can hold on to their lead as their strengths — such as cozy relations with cell carriers worldwide — are diluted by new entrants Apple and Google, who are "vocally trying to dislodge the carriers from the nexus of the North American wireless market." One of RIM's strengths in the corporate market has been their security. Yet Apple executives have said that one-third of Fortune 500 companies were interested in giving iPhones — with all their known and potential security holes — to their employees.
In the European market both RIM and Apple are almost non-existent, I'd guess they got fraction of a percent together. Nokia is who got the smart phone market share here, along with some smaller companies, like Ericsson. After all, a smart phone without 0.5 Mbps+ internet connection, preferably flat fee, sucks when browsing "web 2.0" sites. That's something neither Apple or RIM delivers right now.
Yeah, it's a goofy name and it runs Windows Mobile but I've really taken a liking to it. EVDO kicks the shit out of EDGE (with RevA, I have clocked 1Mb/s) and built-in GPS is a real convenience. No push email, but you can have it query Exchange, IMAP or POP3 every 5 minutes if you like. The keyboard is also quite useful, IMO.
More important than the hardware, however, is the huge library of 3rd party software that is written for WinMo. I've never been unable to find an application that does what I want. Add to it the fact that it's pretty easy to jump in and write your own code (C++ or C#, your choice) and it adds up to a very appealing package.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Titan
I'm not a fan of the iPhone, but typing on it is extremely easy.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Your right. I see the occasional Blackberry and Windows Mobile nowadays in Italy, but the serious workhorse of choice seems to be Nokia E series and the communicator.
First let's look at the market share.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone
Looks like TFA just picked a few from the bottom of the market share list for Q4 '07 and called them the new front runners!
Kinda hard to discount WM with %12, and with Nvidia's new processor for WM (yes it plays quake 3) for mobile phones it's a shoe in as an IPhone killer. Apple keeps locking up their platform more and more: no browsers, music players, applications that run in the background, all because apple doesn't want competition on their phone.
----Digression---
Didn't MS get sued for being a monopoly when it included a browser? Somthing you need if you want to get another browser or anything of the Internet (I guess you can use telnet). They didn't say "no browsers but ours" they just included it for free. Apple specifically states that you can't make a browser on their IPhone OS and everyone looks the other way? What a bunch of bias bullshit.----EODigression---
I think it's way to early to say what "two" big players are going to be left, at this point it's obvious it's not going to just two, there are 4 or 5 or more and I doubt the "big" one's are going to be Apple and RIM, Apple doesnt care a rats ass about security (Safari accepts invalid 3rd party certs 100% of the time, and don't get me started on the IPhone itself.), and RIM's idea of 'PUSH EMAIL' is: "buy this $5000 software from us to give your email server "RIM PUSH EMAIL" and god help you if their racket of a service fails, not to mention their complete lack of hardware innovation in the last decade. IMHO Apple and RIM seem like the least promising.
I use Blackberry/RIM as a corporate user, and have seen the iPhone in action a fair amount.
I think the iPhone interface has a lot more potential, and should set the new standard. I think other business users are wondering why they can't have that quality iPhone interface - Blackberries fall short in terms of the information display corporate users often need.
I agree with your point about Apple being that rare company that could pull off a landslide - having a better mousetrap (or the appearance of one - not sure what technical superiority Symbian and RIM may have) and having the rare ability to change the market's mind - could make for a lot of competitive innovation in smart phones. I think it is great and about time.
Meanwhile, its RIM for me for now; not sure for how much longer.
My guess is that someone at Apple is either pulling this out of their arse, or it's from some sort of survey of Fortune 500 executives
Actually, it's from their quarterly earnings conference call last week. Apple reported that over one-third of the Fortune 500 has applied to Apple's iPhone 2.0 beta Enterprise program, along with over 400 higher-education institutions.
Look at firmware 2.0 - it addresses a lot of those concerns, with features such as remote data erasing, exchange, etc.
About the same as a blackberry, really.
I'm not trying to diss Blackberry (never used one, so that would be quite foolish), just noticed that you listed a lot of features that I know WinMo has as being critical for the warrior. It is true that all the road warriors that I know do use BBs but I don't know if that's because of their IT dept, disappointment (WinMo 5 was not acceptable) or whatever else actually animates IT decisions.
True story: I flew next to a guy that had a BB and a RAZR that seemed to think it was perfectly normal to have them be two separate devices. He fell asleep before I could interrogate him further . . .
Just an FYI, but about 95% of my iPhone internet/email use occurs at work, home, or in a couple of local restaurants... ALL of which are WiFi enabled. So while EDGE is a bit pokey elsewhere, by and large it doesn't matter, because event though 3G beats EDGE, WiFi beats 3G.
..."
"Windows Mobile is #1 in usability."
(ROTFLMAO) How in the world did you manage to say that with a straight face?
"There are almost an infinite number of apps available for Symbian and Windows Mobile
Yeah, but how many file managers and to do lists do you really need?
"Even if your interface is shiny, what can it actually do?"
Other than be a phone, web browser, email system, iPod, video iPod, SMS system, camera, photo album, clock, calendar, and so on and so forth? I guess you haven't seen what's coming via the SDK, have you?
"...m sure we can all agree iPhone is not a business device."
Well, since I use it for that purpose, no, we can't.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I couldn't agree more. I was "forced" to integrate a BES server into our org and I was Very Reluctant to do so. I went from a active x toolbar applet to support 1 phone (ok, so I had to pull off some firewall magic) to a full blown server app, to support now 2 phones. As soon as I added the users and saw that I could brick the phones in aboot 12 seconds flat, I was sold. Sure, $100 per CAL is a bit much, but it's not in MY budget, and I can control it from home. Oh ya, I have since added many more phones, and switched servers BES was running on with about 7-10 min of downtime. Might as well not even told them I was bringing it down to switch. As I said, I'm sold.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Apples & oranges.
You shouldn't compare programming in J2ME to the iPhone SDK, you should be using the Symbian API directly.
J2ME is for when you want your app to run on non-Symbian phones.
Watch this Heartland Institute video