Apple versus RIM: Now it's Game On

Are we sure AAPL and RIM will be rivals? RIM licenses BB client technology (it's available on Palm and, I think, Windows Mobile, from some carriers). Companies will never put up with a special server for iPhones while still supporting BBs. Isn't AAPL's best strategy to license a BlackBerry client from RIM?

RIM is not going to put up much of a fight. Take away RIM's push email and what do you have? NOTHING. RIM's phones are slow internet surfers with wonky interfaces. It is ONLY that the email is better than all other cell phones previously that RIM was able to build a business. Just look at RIM's numbers - AFTER ALL THIS TIME in the biz, they have 12 million users. Apple should surpass that number by the end of this year. RIM is a niche company like panasonic toughbooks. A good business but not an Apple like business - not mass market.

Um, Apple has a corporate sales division plus that AT&T company does a little business with corporations too.

Yep, RIMM is a one trick pony.
Overpriced by a factor of 3 (IMHO) and they dont have the software, the OS, that Apple has built in to the iPhone. No-one has anything like the Mac OS in the iPhone.

Apple has spent years getting all this to work together well - and it DOES!

Thats why the iPhone is going to be the big one for Apple - they have ALL the pieces.

Add the SDK and some push mail server/enterprise stuff, and its ugly days for Blackberry.....

If Apple does prove to be NEW competition To RIMM, HOW can RIMM sustain a 59.66 multiple p/e.? Personally I think that it is a "miracle" of "analyst sponsorship" that has kept its price from going to the 20 range. Also, isn't the Pearl not a REAL smartphone, but something closer to a regular phone with NO carrier rebates over the life of the service contract? What about ALL of this "lost' revenue to RIMM"? RIMM is over the EDGE and falling.

RIM & Apple will eventually have to
duke it out. But RIM's safe for now.
Apple will need to drop the 8GB iPhone
price by another $100 to really start
putting a hurting on RIM. That's about the
price point where function vs cost will really
start to weigh in on the consumer's mind.
Especially those that bought that lame Pearl
phone thinking it was an equally cheap alternative.

" the iPhone’s high price"????

Here in the Middle East, I pay just about as much for an unlocked iPhone as I do for an unlocked Blackberry 83xx or 88xx. So there's no difference there.

The main selling point is still that the Berry is better integrated with most company's IT systems (Exchange etc). If Apple can come up with a competing solution to that, they have a shot. And it's simple things like on a Berry I can have separate signatures for the different email accounts. On the iPhone there's only one for all of them. That seems like a big omission from Apple, but it's a very annoying thing.

Also here in the Middle East there is of course no official iPhone sales (but plenty of unofficial ;-) and in UAE we have no unlimited dataplan, so even for those with iPhones, it's expensive. Well, there is what they call "unlimited" plan, which is really max 10GB per month, and for that we pay AED460, around $125/m.

Some of you don´t really understand the RIM business. Actually the iphone model, where they sell the phone and make a deal with the carriers to cash from the data service plans is as close as Apple could get to the RIM model.

Every BB sold come with a push email service attached. Here is where the money is. While Apple is figuring out how to introduce their iphone in Europe, RIM is finishing deals in Latin America and Africa. The base of clients is quite large.

This reminds me of one company that once dominated a hand-held device market: Palm. At that time, nobody denied their success, technological and design advantages, and business model. It is now, however, a yesterday's company.

Could RIM be the next Palm in a next decade? I don't know. But one thing is clear to everybody. Apple has nothing to lose and potentially a lot to gain in corporate smart phone market.

So, which one do you bet?

Yep, RIMM is a one trick pony.
Overpriced by a factor of 3 (IMHO) and they dont have the software, the OS, that Apple has built in to the iPhone. No-one has anything like the Mac OS in the iPhone
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Muhahaha. Nokia's S60v3 + BB connector.

The posters here seem to have no clue how difficult and complex it is to penetrate the corporate market, and how impossible it will be for Apple enter and upseat an incumbent. Apple has failed miserably to do so with PCs and will fail to do so with the iPhone. Corporate spenders pay $40 a MONTH for BlackBerry, consumers are only willing to pay a tiny fraction of that for an iPhone with a bunch of pretty features.

Second: *good* email, calendar, contacts and synch is 95% of what you will do with a smartphone - people are completely addicted to good mobile messaging, whereas the browser is for commercials - it's almost a waste of time in practice, there are very few real uses for a mobile browser.

Anyone who owns a BlackBerry knows they could never live without it, whereas the iPhone is a toy.

Also - though RIM only has 12M subs, they sell far more phones than that, they will outsell Apple 3 to 1 this year on 320 carriers to Apples 3.