I am giving you ample warning, there is a bit of a rant coming…
Apple announced the iPhone 3G yesterday and to everyones surprise, set the price pretty darn cheap. I certainly didn’t expect the new iPhone to be $199. I commented about my surprise and even wrote a post asking RIM what are they going to do next. I hope, however, that I didn’t give the impression that it is all over for RIM and that the BlackBerry can’t compete anymore in the market which they currently dominate.
Was I surprised? Yes. Do I think that yesterday marked the beginning of the end for the BlackBerry? Expletive No! Let’s not forget that the first time the iPhone killed the BlackBerry, RIM’s marketshare increased and they made more money and sold more BlackBerrys than they ever have before. This is why I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why folks, once again are claiming that they BlackBerry is dead.
RIM may be the leader in the enterprise market right now and companies like Microsoft will constantly claim that they can hold their own, but rest assured that this is a two horse race. And although the BlackBerry has led the way, Steve Jobs just dealt a decisive blow that will not only force RIM to capitulate, but could see the end of the BlackBerry line altogether.
Lets focus on the second sentence in this quote from a CNet piece by Don Reisinger. Come on now… Really? The only thing the iPhone 3G had that you didn’t expect was MMS and because Apple decided to make it affordable, it could see the end of the BlackBerry line?
Five words come to mind… Are you frigging kidding me!
Now, I don’t mean to pick on just this one CNet article. There literally are dozens of other ones out there with the same sentiment.
The iPhone 3G costs half as much, is twice as fast and because of this, the most dominant smartphone company in the world needs to close up shop. Nevermind all the business reasons that helped RIM increase it’s share over the last year, the iPhone is faster and cheaper so the BlackBerry can’t possibly compete… I mean, Really?
BlackBerry users… Carry your umbrellas with you today. The sky is falling.
Honestly I think if anyone is like me is really disappointed with the new iphone. They didn’t really do much just add 3G and GPS…which is really nothing. They didn’t fix all the other issues that the phone has like NO MMS, NO Video Recording, No streaming with bluetooth headsets..Still no copy and paste…Like come on those lil features are so small and they didn’t fix it. It is crazy…I think Apple gave RIM a chance to fix their OS and get back in the game.
It’s US$199 with a contract with AT&T, only. That’s not the price if you don’t sign up for AT&T service. I suppose you could immediately cancel the AT&T service and pay their early termination fee, which will bring the price of the iPhone to more like $400.
Compare this to $99 for 8130 or $180 with a 8330 (with Sprint contract).
I don’t see anywhere that it says you can buy an iPhone without contract for $199.
I would say the iPhone has now built a foundation for a solid and long lasting competitor in the smartphone industry. I think RIM will hold their own, as long as they make the right moves, which would be the price of the phones, and their line of consumer focused phones.
We all know the business world is behind RIM, but lets face it, there are a lot more normal consumers, than businesses. And the consumer markets buld the hype, turn a name into a household phrase, and frankly … lead sales most of the time.
One thing i’m tired of is people in the BB community saying that RIM has lost focus because they’re releasing a touchscreen device or a flip phone. They need to understand, that in order for them to be relevant and survive, they must expand. No one said they’re dropping the 88XX series, they’re just adding more devices to the blackberry family.
I think RIM has to do a few things this summer with their upcoming devices though…
-I think the Bold and Thunder has to be no more than $249 (before any mail-in-rebates). The iPhone being at $199 has just made that the new pricing point in consumer’s minds for a smartphone.
-Release the Bold and/or Thunder within 2-4 weeks after iPhone’s release, building hype of the phone between then. This could possible cause some potential iPhone customers to at least wait and compare before making a final decision.
-Consider releasing one or both of these devices on multiple carriers a lot closer in dates. I think each device shuld be released on at lesat 2 carriers within a month of being released. the THunder on Verizon AND AT&T would be huge.
just my rant and 2 cents for the day 🙂
RIM Forever!!!!
Well said Patrick C. If I were RIM, however, I would set those prices at $199 max.
If they don’t they will have to contend with, “but the iPhone 3G is cheaper. RIM needs to go ahead and get that objection clean out of the way.
I am not surprised about the 3g iPhone or the lower price. What I am surprised about is that RIM has had at least a 3 year headstart and we still don’t have a 3g Blackberry. Frankly, I love my Blackberry, but I am disappointed that RIM is falling behind for no good reason.
The CNet article was bait for hits. There is no substantive thought behind his article. He keeps saying RIM is dead because it’s not an iPhone. That’s his reasoning, because it’s not an iPhone. Remember that $199 is the SUBSIDIZED price. Curves and Pearls go for how much when subsidized? Sometimes free. The Bold will have to be priced around $200 subsidized, and it will. RIM will continue to do extremely well as the market for smartphones explodes in the next few years. Remember that today only about 15% of all mobiles sold globally are smartphones. This will increase dramatically in the coming years.
Other than business users that stuck with BlackBerry, I can see some BB users might switch to iPhone. Kill BB now? No but it will eat up some BB market share for sure.
iPhone helps promote smartphone industry. In the past months, there aren’t very much iPhone available. When there are enough for sales, I am sure you’ll see the differences.
Me? I have BB (curve) and will have iPhone (3G).
the iphone is cheaper for a reason, TO COMPETE WITH BLACKBERRY. while the iphone is COOL, it’s still an mp3 player with a phone, not a phone with an mp3 player, there is a difference in the corporate world and the reason why iphone will NEVER be in the business world while Blackberry will always be for both business and non-business individuals and i refuse to believe that the iphone is inevitable to be in my possession in the future. and i sure won’t be one of those people waiting on long lines once again for an iphone.
Of course that CNET article is silly; BB is not going away. They are too well entrenched in the enterprise segment, and of course, there’s that issue of the keyboard for many.
I agree with Robb; Apple only widens the market for smartphones and the rising tide lifts all boats, including RIM’s. At this point there is so much growth left in this market that RIM and Apple can expand simultaneously.
That being said, though, Apple has laid down a marker at the 199 price. Any phone that dares to come out more expensive will automatically be criticized. You can just hear the argument made in store after store, something like, “gosh, that phone is even more expensive than an iPhone, and the iPhone is the most advanced phone on the market.”
The Thunder and the Bold have to come out no higher than 199, and I mean without rebates. It won’t cut it to ask someone to pay more out of pocket and only match the 199 price with rebates.
And there’s no doubt that at 199 the iPhone will snatch some customers away from RIM.
In fact, I think Apple will not be able to make iPhones fast enough.
And yes, RIM needs to announce the Thunder very soon, and show it off some. That and VZW better not lock down the GPS feature; imagine the comparison for someone choosing…you go with the iPhone and get free GPS, you go with the Thunder and have to pay.
First, I just wanted to say that anyone paying attention to Mac forums or websites had a good idea that the phone would go on sale for $200. Rumors had been swirling for a while that Apple would allow this one to be subsidized.
Second, I’m a little burnt out on the whole BB vs. iPhone deal. I don’t think one means the death of the other, they’re still pretty different devices with very different strengths (and weaknesses.) People who love the iPhone probably aren’t interested in BBs in the first place – it’s mostly the internet and iPod capabilities they’re after. Those who love BBs undoubtedly love their physical keyboard and the one stop shopping like messaging capabilities. The iPhone may be talking a good game regarding PUSH email, but I’ve been using the iPhone for a year and their email client is dreadful. You also can’t customize the phone as much as you can a BB, which goes beyond asthetics – it’s nice to have different sounds and volumes for different alerts.
I think that as long as Iphone is limited to one carrier they will never be the number one smartphone. RIM on various carriers makes it more available to more people. For example I’m on my 4th blackberry on tmobile but my brother used a palm for years on sprint. He refused to change carries as he feels they are the best. I did convince to switch to a berry and now he has a sprint 8830. I live in NYC so I don’t have any reception problems. I can’t see switching carriers just to get and new phone that will cause me to have a more a bigger bill.
Too early to tell but I happen to believe that Blackberry has peaked.
I’m especially disappointed that nobody has shown an improved browser on the up and coming Blackberry 9000.
I’ve carried a Blackberry since my days in public accounting – which stretch back to 1990. I just ditched it in favor of an iphone. Yeah the keyboard-less interface takes getting used to.
Blackberry is vulnerable on:
1. Browser
2. Requirement to subscribe to an outside email plan
3. Lack of HTML email
4. Requirement to use a BES to hook to Exchange
I went on for quite some time about this here:
http://www.geardiary.com/2008/05/19/goodbye-blackberry-its-not-me-its-you-heres-10-reasons-i-left/
Will I ever buy another Blackberry? I wouldn’t rule it out — but Blackberry would have to make some improvements in their browser and I think I’d need to be able to get my emailo without running it through BIS or BES before I’d consider it.
Just my .02 — YMMV
-Wayne
I didn’t WANT a BlackBerry… EVER!
Then one day I changed jobs. When I walked in the door on the very first day, the office manager handed me a BlackBerry. I cringed.
As a business user that has now become addicted to the keyboard, I feel like something is missing when I am without it. To me, the BlackBerry is a tool – while the iPhone is a toy. My next personal-use phone will likely be the new iPhone, but I won’t give up my tools without a fight.
Good job, RIM! You’ve won me over!
…the iphone is still not business centric. and i agree that rim needs to focus on the consumer market.
but lets be honest here. to say that the iphone is a bb killer is a bit premature. bb’s have been around in force since the early 90’s. the iphone has been around for a year and a half. when apple can show the kind of sustained demand that rim has demonstrated over the past decade and a half, then we’ll talk.
…here’s another thought. how PO’ed are all the 1st-gen iphone owners going to be that they spent $400+ and now they can get this 2nd-gen for half the price?
might make for some very unhappy customers… and some new BB owners. maybe?
First off, I think Don Reisinger may just be ‘hellno’. LOL…just kidding.
But really, as long as there’s corporations that are serious about security and too many entertainment features, then the BB will still be around, healthy and strong. It’s hard to justify giving an iPod with calling and camera capabilities to your company employees. Ah yes…Mr. XYZ loaded his porno on his iPhone, which was found at the clients conference room. Or Mrs. ABC lost her iPhone on the train and all her passwords were on the device. With BB you can make a quick call (when you get to a phone) and have the Adm. wipe out the device. Not so sure you can do that with an iPhone, unless you’re running Exchange (and I’m not sure if you can or can’t do it with that either, anyone know?). Security is a very important piece, and a high percentage of RIM’s business is on the corporate side. If anything, I think RIM is trying to invade Apple’s territory by coming out with consumer oriented devices.
And how come Paris Hilton, the Kardashian sisters, Lohan, etc. all use BB’s? Why not iPhones? Space heads they may be, but BB’s is what we see. There’s your consumer base.
Sorry…had to throw that one in. 🙂
Hey Wayne, The 9000 series is coming out with a better browser for the Blackberry.
johnnyhef: I don’t think too many of the 1st gen iPhone buyers are going to be so mad at Apple for the new phone at the new price that they bolt to BB.
If anything, most of those early adopters will just buy the new model of iPhone.
Early adopters are used to this phenomenon, and those who bought one generation of the iPod don’t switch when a newer, often less expensive version comes out.
bluehorseshoe makes a good point about celebrities and their BB’s. Obviously they love them for their email and messaging capabilities, which does say something about how important the core strength of the BB is to their sales. However, I also bet that these celebs also have an iPhone…when you are their wealth level, you probably have multiple phones and pretty much buy on whatever whim you want to.
If any platform is headed for history, its Win Mobile. With Exchange support on the iphone, there is really no reason to put up with all the quirks and bugs in Win Mobile. I think RIM will be around a little longer.
I think the key everyone here is missing is the new iphone price is subsidized. ATT will be losing money on every iphone sold. It could work out (see sony with the ps3 recently), OR there could be very little gains in new customers and ATT is no better off a year from now as today. The whole thought process is to attract new users so that ATT can receive their service revenue in incalcuable amount of years.
Not really. Before, you could buy the iphone and not activate with AT&T in which case AT&’T got nothing. With the new 3G, there are no more on line sales with Apple, all iphones get activated before you leave the store, so at the very least AT&T gets you for 2 years or gets the ETF. Plus they are getting another $10 a month for the data, $15 if you want text messaging. So who’s losing out? Not AT&T.
The mention of those people gives your post absolutely no credibility what so ever.
Argonnj,
Please refer to the WSJ Marketplace front page article yesterday regarding ATT’s profit regarding the new price. If you are more knowledgeable about ATT and its profits than their CEO, I’d be pretty shocked.
Did you miss the whole point of my article stating the purpose of the price IS to get people on ATT. That whole purpose would revolve around the monthly rates charged for an iphone plan. If you could have a phone with no future monthly charges, a company wouldn’t go out of its way for new customers which give no future profits but take up bandwidth.
And the whole buying a phone and not activating it with no ETF is luck for some people. Many people have been charged the ETF for doing that. The contract (which you sign upon purchase of the phone) was you paid full retail but HAVE to get an ATT plan for 2 years. That has been discussed many times before, so that knocks out that argument.
Then again you could say “go ahead do that, just never plug your iphone in again cause your phone will get wiped upon updating.” So now you have an outdated iphone, what’s that truly worth to anyone outside of Tmo (which is a small percentage of cell phone users)?
This sums it all up folks…
SMARTMONEY.COM: Techsmart: New iPhone Won’t Derail BlackBerry (DJ)
By Dan Burrows
Of SMARTMONEY.COM
(This article was originally published Tuesday)
THE SECOND COMING of the iPhone didn’t disappoint. As expected, Apple’s (AAPL) latest and
greatest gadget sports a 3G connection for faster web browsing, GPS and is slightly thinner at
the edges, among other goodies.
Also as expected, the iPhone 3G has enterprise support, meaning corporate users can employ
Microsoft’s (MSFT) Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to get push email, calendar and contacts. It
also has secure access to corporate networks thanks to software from Cisco Systems (CSCO) and
IT departments can remotely wipe it clean should it go missing in the wild.
At first glance all those features might sound uncomfortably close to what Research in
Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerrys do. Perhaps of more concern is that Steve Jobs & Co. slashed the
price on the iPhone 3G. Consumers and corporate users can now pick one up for as little as
$200.
That’s BlackBerry territory, too.
We have little doubt that Apple will succeed in making the iPhone a mass-market gadget that
also picks up some corporate users, but RIM needn’t fret. The company still has plenty of
critical advantages in the enterprise business and is playing smart defense with sexy phones
that should continue to grab consumers and retain loyal fanboys.
Most important, the smartphone market’s growing so rapidly that there’s plenty of pie for
both of them.
As buzz-worthy as the iPhone 3G is, it’s no BlackBerry, and it doesn’t try to be. It’s
probably best in class in a number of areas, including its operating system, media capabilities
and touchscreen technology.
Still, the phenomenal success of RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl and Curve models show that plenty of
consumers and business users still want a real keyboard. And when it comes to push email
BlackBerry Enterprise Server is still superior to Microsoft Exchange. (During Monday’s
presentation even Apple executive Philip Schiller referred to Microsoft’s ActiveSync as
“ActiveStink.”) And let’s not forget how entrenched RIM is in the enterprise world.
Meanwhile, it’s not as if RIM has been standing still waiting for Apple to steal its base.
The BlackBerry Bold, supposedly launching next month, isn’t just an iPhonish handset with a
“qwerty” keyboard. It should be a 3G beast with a high-resolution display, GPS, WiFi and lots
of other cool features.
Then there’s the BlackBerry Thunder, a touchscreen copycat of the iPhone rumored to be
available sometime in the third quarter. A touchscreen on a BlackBerry is a gamble but it seems
one well worth taking.
So although Apple’s likely to poach some civilian CrackBerry addicts and make some inroads
into enterprise, RIM is well positioned and the market’s got plenty of room for this
competition.
Worldwide smartphone sales grew nearly 30% in the seasonally slow first quarter to more than
32 million units, according to market researcher Gartner. In North America, sales more than
doubled. RIM itself more than doubled its unit sales and grew its market share to 13% from 8% a
year ago. The iPhone came from nowhere to claim 5% of the global market in the first quarter.
Not only is RIM more than holding its own, it turns out that this rivalry is not a zero-sum
game between BlackBerry and iPhone. Indeed, they’re both taking share from everyone else,
especially Nokia (NOK). Indeed, American Technology Research analyst Mark McKechnie downgraded
shares of Nokia to neutral from buy Monday over concern that the RIM and Apple onslaught of 3G
handsets could get ugly for the world’s biggest cellphone maker.
We’ll take it as pretty much a foregone conclusion that the faster, cheaper iPhone 3G will be
a huge success, but we doubt it will make RIM a punchline. If anything, the joke will be on
Nokia.
-For more information and analysis of companies and mutual funds, visit SmartMoney.com at
http://www.smartmoney.com‚/
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
06-11-08 0737ET
Copyright (c) 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Bluehorseshoe,
You bring up a good point about the celebrities that use BlackBerrys. Cost really isn’t an issue for them so why don’t we see more of them using iPhones?
You can find pictures of famous people using BlackBerrys a dime a dozen, but, trust me when I tell you that pictures of famous iPhone users are hard to come by.
Actually, I do think the iPhone is a serious threat to RIM. However, it looks like RIM is waking up and not sitting on their laurels. In the past, RIM has been very slow to market, very slow to adopt new features, and too complacent. I think Apple has knocked some of the rust off that corporation and, assuming RIM tries to compete, there is more than enough room for RIM, Apple, Nokia, and Google. Sell your Moto stock though!