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.

Comments

The world is not the U.S.

[mvdwege]

And again U.S.-centric media act as if the U.S. market is representative for the whole world.

Here's a hint: RIM is only a player in push-mail smartphones. Worldwide, the major smartphone platform is Symbian. Apple may as well not exist in the world-wide market. I have seen a colleagues iPhone, and it is a nice little machine, but it is currently geared more for multimedia use than as a business smartphone. It will take Apple at least one more generation to actually become a threat to Symbians dominance of the marketplace.

Of course, compared to the other bit players in the marketplace, if one company can pull off a landslide shift in marketshare, it will be Apple. It helps that they understand Marketing extremely well.

Mart

Re:The world is not the U.S.

[Tony Hoyle]

Security, ability to install bespoke applications, secure VPN, secure wireless, exchange integration, ability to dial out on multiple numbers...

Apple is trying to address some of these with firmware 2.0 but there's one key that businesses look for - the ability to negotiate very competative deals with the providers because they can play them off one another and get much lower than the published prices (one place I was at the mere threat of going elsewhere usually got them insanely good deals - that was a big contract). Apple has yet to address this, as there is currently nowhere else to go, and iphone is a monoculture.. if you port your apps to it you're stuck with it.

iphones

[perlchild]

The iphone, warts and all, appears to be an actual platform. It's actually usable. Every blackberry owner I've seen so far sees it as a mail client, there are very few third party apps and they're not widely known.

The iphone will have third party apps(thanks to the controversy that it didn't) and people will know about them. I'd say that's a good reason to worry at RIM.

I'll miss my palm when my company gets to me, but I hope they replace the blackberries they have with iphones, not force the blackberries onto us.

Different solutions for different applications

[lohphat]

The reason RIM has the business market is that they have features which mate it scalable for the enterprise, every other player hasn't matched features for that target market.

The ability to brick lost phones, encrypt contents, apply IT security profiles, provision remotely over the air, sync to the server to make the hand-held expendable, data modem for the laptop, etc. And there are apps for the BB for many major ERP and sales tools. The key business integrations for the road warrior are already there.

I think the iPhone et al are cool as a *personal* tool/toy but more often than not, they don't scale into a company where protection of IP and low TCO are mandated. For your personal use, you can absorb all the geekiness you want because the support required starts and ends with yourself.

Try to deploy 1000 iPhones in a company and you're going to hemorrhage money.

RIM isn't as sexy but it's a stable, known, scalable, and for the most part, secure solution.