“Research in Motion takes the stage this week to preach to a gathering of its faithful in Florida during the Canadian company’s annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium. But just as the BlackBerry maker seems to be reaching the height of success, its flock may well start to stray,” Scott Moritz reports for Fortune.
“Not only will followers be tempted by new devices like Apple’s forthcoming business-friendly iPhone, other sect members will face excommunication as cost-cutting initiatives sweep through the office ranks,” Moritz reports. RIM has just unveiled the company’s “first 3G phone, the BlackBerry Bold,” Moritz reports.
“Due to delays first reported by Fortune, the dazzling BlackBerry Bold will not be available in the United States until as late as August. This means Apple will beat RIM to the market in June with its 3G iPhone,” Moritz reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Dazzling? No.
Moritz continues, “And according to Cisco, the iPhone business plan seems to be marching along. On an earnings call with analysts last week, Cisco chief John Chambers said the new iPhone has some of Cisco’s office network security system loaded on. ‘The upcoming software version 2 for the iPhone incorporates Cisco’s VPN technology,’ Chambers said. Having the networking giant involved with Apple’s business play certainly can’t be comforting to RIM.”
“A good part of RIM’s success is reflected in the stock’s rise, which has so far defied the slowing economy and sluggish corporate information technology spending. But the new product delay coupled with arrival of Apple and Nokia’s BlackBerry killers, may challenge RIM’s perennial winner status,” Mortiz reports.
Full article here.
John Paczkowski reports for AllThingsD,”The BlackBerry Bold won’t ship until as late as August, which means Apple (AAPL) could beat it to market with the enterprise-friendly 3G iPhone it’s rumored to be uncrating at its Worldwide Developer’s Conference in June. Which has got to worry RIM. After all, the first-generation iPhone had claimed a 28% market share by the fourth quarter of 2007. That’s still less than the BlackBerry, which holds about a 41% market share, but the iPhone hasn’t even been on the market a year.”
Full article, “Think of It as an iPhone With a Broken Touchscreen,” here.
Ville Heiskanen reports for Bloomberg, “The Bold has 1 gigabyte of memory, more than any previous BlackBerry. Users can expand it to 8 gigabytes with a memory card. Cupertino, California-based Apple [already] sells the [current] iPhone in 8-gigabyte and 16-gigabyte versions.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike in Helsinki” for the heads up.]
The BlackBerry? What’s that? Oh… That old phone with the keyboard… I remember those.
I told my friend last week that her insistence that her Curve was better than my iPhone was comparable to my grandfather insisting his percolator was better than my parents’ coffee maker.
Or my father insisting that his old home AM radio has better sound than my tiny Bose speakers…
RIMM was a good ride while it laster. Time to transfer to the express.
Scott Moritz is still a numbnut.
“RIM’s BlackBerry is in for a bruising”
Shhhhh, don’t tell Crazylegs.
Actually a percolator is a superior method of brewing coffee. But you wouldn’t know that because you apparently think newer = better?
Seeing RIM and bruising in the title just made me bust out laughing. If there is bruising, you are doing it too hard.
“Due to delays first reported by Fortune, the dazzling BlackBerry Bold will not be available in the United States until as late as August. This means Apple will beat RIM to the market in June with its 3G iPhone,”
How many years head start did RIM have to do this? And to think of all the criticism that Apple got for not being 3G to begin with.
And since when is any BlackBerry “dazzling”?
raskol,
You’re right about percolators. My grandmother’s from the 1950’s beats any modern coffee maker.
@raskol – Really!
CrackBerries are just wireless email devices with cell phone ablities or a better example would be the old Motorola two way pagers with a cell phone option.
What the hell kind of name is Bold? Shouldn’t they have called it the BlackBerry Pi?
Oh you raskol. I’ll take my drip coffee maker over a percolator any day.
The beauty of this article is in its style – using terms like “preach,” “faithful,” “flock,” “followers,” “sect members, ” and “excommunication” – themes typically reserved to paint Apple as the Scientology of tech.
Is it time to short RIMM?
I would be very bold to release a Blackerry BOLD unless it could at least equal a version 1 iPhone.
Version 2 will already be tested by that time…let’s hope for the company that they have something up their sleeve. I regret it, but after what happened today, their move into China is not going to be that profitable…again…hope they have something because the loyal cult of Blackberry customers is going to compare it to the iPhone 2.
blackberry is about to get a black eye!
@raskol
I prefer the French press – for coffee that is…
@ raskol
My father used said percolator when he lived at home 40 years ago, and he prefers his current coffee maker.
I hope this precipitates usable VPN software for the Mac. Either Cisco can’t write it, or my IT department can’t figure out how to use it. All I know is that I’m stuck with the completely intolerable Outlook web email when I’m out of the office.
I loved my blackberry, until I switched off sprint to at&t;and bought an iPhone.
I always referred to my blackberry as my cell phone. I always refer to my iPhone as my iPhone.
Drip & percolate are the same process… liquid filtering down through ground coffee.
Mine’s done when the spoon will stand in the middle! Oh and a good soaking with an overly ripe gym sock will do the trick too.
We used to snort Sanka in Nam.
Jay-Z:
My money is on your incompetent IT department. I’m not sure what kind of configuration you have at work, but my IT dep’t had no problem giving me settings and my Cisco VPN is working just fine. And so is our alternative VPN, CheckPoint. I had it working for years on a Mac (PowerBook, and now MacBook).
A keyboard…how quaint.
@G4Dualie
Drip and Perc the same? Please… The percolator cooks the coffee and squirts brewed coffee back through the used grounds over and over. Yuck!
Percolators are the Zunes of coffeemaking.
Frankly, I find the coffee thread more interesting than RIM’s BOLD. RIM is a good product for those that need its specific talent. I am happy to let Blackberry users use and enjoy their phones. There is room for both, for now, although I think they are going to have trouble competing with Apple’s iPhone plans.