Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology.
Similar to their home countries, Apple and RIM share much in common, but contrast in important ways. Both companies are some of the few that produce their very own software for his or her cellular handsets. Apple, a non-public computing pioneer, sees market expansion in smartphones. RIM, a smartphone pioneer, sees market expansion in mobile computing. Gazing the tablets on offer, Apple was just as adamant in decrying a 7-inch display as RIM was defending it, the latter saying that it sought to create an ultramobile device with the PlayBook.
Apple designs products for consumers which have relevance for enterprises. RIM designs products for enterprises which have relevance for consumers. This has also been evident with the PlayBook, which has taken heat for its loss of native e-mail and calendaring options. RIM consciously put these at the back burner as it desired to appease CIOs occupied with data theft, although it meant a less appealing launch product for consumers. Another parallel: RIM has suffered as AT&T delays in supporting Bridge , just as Apple struggled with AT&T supporting tethering at the iPhone.
Indeed, when Steve Ballmer took the stage at BlackBerry World in Orlando, it brought back memories of a scene that leads off the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, when Bill Gates appeared on screen at Macworld Expo in 1997 to announce a deal that might make Internet Explorer the default browser for the Mac. Fourteen years later, Google has replaced Netscape as Microsoft’s archrival and the BlackBerry has become a prize for Bing.
If Apple was ready to pull itself back from a “near-death experience,” can RIM regain its lost luster too? |
Despite some missteps and demanding market share losses, RIM is nowhere near the state of economic crisis that Apple was in back then. However, in both cases, the illusion of a Microsoft CEO was an indication of confidence in a platform against which Microsoft competes. So, if Apple was ready to pull itself back from what Steve Jobs has called its “near-death experience,” can RIM regain its lost luster too? Has it hit a bump inside the road amidst a transition or is it in freefall as Nokia was ahead of its recent overhaul ?
Apple has one demonstrated advantage in comparison to its northern neighbor, and that have been an acute sense of timing. Just like the big cats for which its Mac operating systems are named, Apple has shown a robust pattern of pouncing at the industry at just the correct time. When the ideal components become affordable enough, Apple envelops them in a luscious layer of user experience to drive mass adoption. RIM, meanwhile, has seen growth stall since miscalculating the challenge of iPhone and its mercenary competitor Android.
Nonetheless, a key reason behind optimism is the single-two punch of RIM acquisitions QNX, which handles the nimble, low-level plumbing of the BlackBerry Tablet OS, and TAT , that’s infusing the historically efficient but stodgy RIM user interface with a way of imagination, whimsy, and exploration. We’ve seen the beginnings of RIM assembling these pieces in programs corresponding to the PlayBook’s scrapbooking app , and likewise in sprucing up the workaday calculator with flourishes which include watching the calculation history get torn off like paper from a vintage adding machine. Here, RIM — like Apple — controls its own destiny. Unlike Nokia’s position with Windows Phone 7, it needn’t, for instance, keep reigns on a user interface direction to circumvent disturbing consistency with competitors.
The challenge, as was acknowledged several times at BlackBerry World, is time. The core components are there. Now RIM is racing competitors to synthesize its acquisitions. It must create a competitive experience with headroom to grow across a set of its own core apps, those 0 of its developers 0 , and, most significantly, expand from a dual-core tablet platform right into a revitalized line of BlackBerry handsets. The sand within the hourglass is the goodwill of corporate and carrier customers that RIM says still have strong demand for its products and trust in its approach.
Ross Rubin ( 1 @rossrubin 1 ) is executive director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm 2 The NPD Group 2 . Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
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