Competition, it does a company good
RIM, makers of Blackberry smartphones, introduced their latest, much hyped phone today – the Blackberry Bold. Many people were anticipating that the Bold would be the answer to Apple’s iPhone. Apparently RIM didn’t get the message that the reason people were awed by the iPhone was its sheer sexiness. Huge, sleek touch screen, innovative user interface, WiFi, etc…
The iPhone’s weak points were its business utility. It doesn’t do business email very well, or at all, it was slow (doesn’t support 3G), it doesn’t support Microsoft Office attachments, and the list goes on. Apple has been saying that those features are coming and venture capitalists have even given preference to funding iPhone application startups. All that is good and well, but RIM’s products have already excelled in the business arena. The only place they fell short was with the consumer, who wanted something cool and hip. They want the phone that they would choose to carry, not one that their job required them to.
So what amazing new design would RIM unveil? Here is a side by side view of the two competitors. (picture courtesy of ArsTechnica)
Lack of wow factor aside, the bigger problem is logistics. The Bold won’t be available until later this summer, and Apple’s next generation iPhone is also slated to be released ambiguously soon (unofficially June). Competition pushed RIM to make a much more interesting product than they have in the past, but at the end of the day, they missed the opportunity to leapfrog their competitor.
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