Is the BlackBerry`s Advantage over the iPhone Ubiquity? (
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Research In Motion announced earlier this week that it plans to
bring the BlackBerry Tour, the latest in its lineup of BlackBerry devices, to
Verizon Wireless customers on July 12. The phone will go on sale for $200
after contract and rebate. Verizon Wireless claims it will allow owners
to make calls in 220 countries around the globe.
It's a smart move for RIM. The company that once easily controlled the
enterprise market (and still relies heavily on the enterprise market for its
business) is being pressured by Apple. For the past couple years, the
iPhone was just another also-ran in the enterprise. It didn't have push
e-mail, calendar and contacts; it didn't feature Exchange support; and it
generally failed at providing enterprise customers with what they really
wanted. For the first two years of its availability, the iPhone was a
consumer device.
But all that has changed. The iPhone is now quite attractive to the
enterprise. It finally sports push e-mail, calendar and contacts. It
also has Exchange support. And after a long time waiting for it, the
device now features copy and paste.
There's one more feature the iPhone has that could make a difference when
companies decide on which product they want to buy: apps. Currently, the
Apple App Store offers more than 50,000 applications. RIM's store has around
1,000 apps available to owners of the BlackBerry Bold, the BlackBerry Storm
and soon, the BlackBerry Tour. That's quite a difference. It gets
worse when you consider that many of the apps listed in the Apple App Store are
designed specifically for business customers. Enterprise iPhone users can
extend the functionality of their mobile devices far beyond anything possible
in current BlackBerry models.
That's a real problem for RIM. All of the advantages it once clung to
have been negated by Apple's recent updates. And worst of all, its
hardware just doesn't appeal to users the way the iPhone does. RIM might still be performing well as a company,
but it's debatable how long that success will last.
Or is it?
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