Typically, the conversation surrounding smartphones centers on which new device is best positioned to challenge Apple's growing influence and success in the market. This point of view presumes that manufacturers will continue to churn out new smartphones that become increasingly feature-equivalent to the iPhone, and that it's only a matter of time before a device will come around and knock Apple off its feet. This perspective is somewhat misguided, and if anything, recent data suggests that it's not Apple who has to worry about losing momentum, but rather RIM who has to worry about the iPhone poaching away BlackBerry users.
This past weekend, Apple blew past analyst estimates and sold over 1 million iPhone 3G S devices, an even more impressive number when you consider the current state of the economy and the fact that we're already on the third iteration of the iPhone. Not to be outdone, last week RIM posted solid earnings and reported better than expected sales of 7.8 million BlackBerrys for the quarter. In typical CEO fashion, RIM CEO Jim Balsillie brushed aside the idea that the Palm Pre or the iPhone would have a noticeable effect on RIM's business. Recent data, however, suggests that Balsillie might have a lot more to worry about than he thinks.
First, Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray recently surveyed a number of iPhone 3G S early adopters at Apple retail stores this past weekend and found that 12% of them were abandoning their BlackBerrys in order to purchase a new iPhone. In previous iPhone launches, only 6% of surveyed customers reported leaving their BlackBerrys behind. To be fair, Munster's sample size wasn't terribly large, and the large number of surveyed consumers leaving RIM for Apple might simply be a testament as to how successful RIM has been in selling its BlackBerry devices in the first place. Still, the underlying take away from Munster's survey is that while RIM might have a higher marketshare than Apple for the time being, its devices aren't compelling enough to keep users from jumping ship to the iPhone and its 50,000 strong iTunes App Store.
Second, market research Crowd Science conducted a survey over the past few weeks measuring what percentage of smartphone users would be willing to purchase a device different from the one they currently own. The survey found that only 14% of non-BlackBerry users would consider ditching their current smartphone for any of RIM's BlackBerry models. In contrast, the survey found that over 40% of non-iPhone users would consider abandoning their current smartphone for an Apple iPhone. Crowd Science CEO John Martin opined on the results, "These results reflect the great challenges Blackberry faces in stemming the iPhone stampede."
And with over 1 million devices sold in just 8 countries this weekend, stampede seems to be an appropriate word.
RIM's challenge is that it already has the enterprise market locked down. It's lineup of BlackBerrys are admittedly great for emailing, and to many corporations, they constitute an integral part of conducting day to day business. But the iPhone shifted the smartphone playing field away from the enterprise and towards the consumer, and no company is better positioned than Apple to excel in that market.
The advent of the iPhone, and more specifically the iTunes App Store, signaled a shift in how people view their phones. No longer used solely for making calls, listening to a few songs, and maybe browsing the web, they now have the potential to be full fledged gaming devices, educational tools, and even turn by turn GPS units, In a way, the iTunes App Store makes the iPhone a device with an almost endless number of potential uses and features.
How can RIM compete with that?
There are a lot of people for whom a BlackBerry device was their first smartphone. Now, it seems that for many, an iPhone will be their second.
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You are dumb, look at the
You are dumb, look at the business world, what employer is going to shell out tons of cash for a toy that plays mp3s and checks facebook... Blackberries have proper IT security and better email/messaging functionality which is a core for business users, which is what the blackberry built for. Not for 20-somthings who have to much time on there hands and need to use twitter to make them selfs feel cool.
Let me know when your
Let me know when your Blackberry can access your enterprise email directly... like my iPhone can.
PS: Enjoy all the Blackberry downtime when their NOCs are down! I'll be using Exchange just fine, thank you very much!
ACtually, not as many need
ACtually, not as many need to as you think --- much of the time, employees buy those phones for their own use and then want them to be connected to the enterprise.
That's essentially how MS Windows got in to enterprises as well. People had it at home and wanted it at work.
"what employer is going to
"what employer is going to shell out tons of cash for a toy that plays mp3s and checks facebook"
Uhhh...my employer? I work in a smallish-medium sized software development firm (about 150 employees), and we're migrating away from BBs in favor of iPhones. Why?
1. Only paranoid, anti-employee companies give a rats-ass about whether or not the company-issue cellphones can play mp3's. This is due-diligence run-amok - it's dumb managers trying to score points by demonstrating that absolutely nothing that doesn't have a direct business use, no matter how incidental and inexpensive, is being paid for by the company. After they get rid of your mp3 player, they'll tell you to get rid of the plant on your desk because it consumes business-relevant desk space. If you're not a desirable enough worker to find a better place to work than that, then I pity you.
2. The iphone is no more expensive at retail than a typical Blackberry.
3. The company already has an Exchange server to hook the iPhones up to to get mobile push email, but the Blackberry requires a BES. How much does a BES license cost, you might ask? We could hire another studio coordinator for the cost of our BES license. It's stupidly expensive, and not much more functional than the Exchange server integration on the iPhone - certainly not enough to justify the outrageous premium.
"Blackberries have proper IT security and better email/messaging functionality which is a core for business users"
Get real. The Blackberry handsets themselves might have better battery life and hardware keyboards, but, especially with iphone os 3, the iPhone in the enterprise is at the 95% functionality mark now with respect to BB. If your IT deptartment isn't giving you the option of carrying an iPhone now, they should have to justify that, especially given how much more expensive Blackberry is to the company.
Just Swap the Batteries
To circumvent the battery issue, just swap out the battery in the I-Phone when it runs low - I've hav 2 batteries for my current phone for this, though I do not use the I-Phone
You're quite defensive...
There are still a few important areas where Blackberries/RIM outshine the iPhone in a corporate environment. I run our corporate cell/bb and email infrastructure (500 employees) and I myself have used BB for 7 years, severely dependent upon its features. Last week I switched to iPhone 3GS and put it through its paces to compare.
I've written about this difference a little on my blog, and am working on a more comprehensive review of what Apple needs to do to make iPhone more corporate friendly.
In general, these factors involve, in no particular order:
- Customized ring/vibrate/alert Profiles
- Quick one-touch Profile Selection
- Level 1 Message capability (filters for profiles). This is important so you can set a profile to notify you differently based on the message. You might want emails with "high priority" set to vibrate the phone and have a custom ring. You might want emails from your boss or the CEO to also notify you, but not the stupid advertising notes. You might want to filter some messages completely out from being delivered to the phone at all, to save on bandwidth and battery.
- Natively fast UI (ie, if you know what you're doing, you can do it very fast. The iPhone UI, albeit easier to use out of the box, is naturally slow in terms of how many steps things require).
- The ability to dial without looking at phone. Redial just requires hitting dial twice on a BB
- Shortcut dialing (ie, hold down "h" key to dial home). Don't try to compare this to voice dialing because voice dialing only works in silent environments, and you still have to look at the phone at some point to verify that it's not dialing the wrong person.
- Focus is required for a lot of tasks (you can't do things "blind" due to lack of hardware keyboard). Not only that, you need both hands frequently.
- Multitasking apps
- Full control from BES server to manage/wipe remote devices. Sure, mobile me at $100/yr has "find my iphone" but you can't globally control the phone's options. If company pays for the phone, they may want to be able to control the data, passwords, access.
- API: Apple still doesn't release abilities for developers to control the phone more, like how to turn off 3G? You have to click, click, click, click, click, watching the screen the whole time. It's a battery killer, and it should be easier to turn off based on environment, like maybe with profiles. Same for bluetooth, wifi
- VPN without requiring VPN. iPhone has VPN ability, but you can't do a shortcut for it, and it makes EVERYTHING go over the VPN. With BB and BES server, you can have intranet access be encrypted and you don't have to launch a VPN client on the phone. It just plain works (it's called MDS on BES).
- Multiple email accounts: on the iPhone it takes 4-5 clicks to go from one email inbox to another, which can be very annoying when you have multiple email, like work and personal. BB? 3 or less, if you count each trackwheel motion.
- QWERTY keyboard: no doubt, the fastest typer on a bb will always beat the fastest typer on an iphone. Caps by holding down a key on a BB is so much easier
- Customized auto-correct: I haven't seen this yet on iPhone but it might be there. But you can program shortcuts like "hr" auto expands to "Human Resources" and have all sorts of things like that. "ld" expands in to the local date and time. You can control this centrally, too, for corporate terminology.
- iPhone is easier to learn, but you hit a productivity/efficiency limit pretty quick. BB is harder to learn, but allows the power user to gain a LOT of power.
- small things, like when you type in an email form, the bb takes "space bar" and replaces it with @ and . when it makes sense. In a web form, it takes "space bar" and replaces / when it makes sense. copy and paste are keyboard shortcuts or context menu prompts.
- Can change out of office meeting from the blackberry (can't on iPhone I think)
- Can set up custom deliery profiles from the blackberry
- Ability to see phone calls, texts, and emails all in one inbox
- Tethering
That's probably enough to get the iPhone koolaid drinks riled up a bit :)
Umm...
...most of which is the 5% BB advantage that I alluded to. Customizable email handling is still a BB advantage. And the rest?
- Full control from BES server to manage/wipe remote devices. Sure, mobile me at $100/yr has "find my iphone" but you can't globally control the phone's options. If company pays for the phone, they may want to be able to control the data, passwords, access.
You don't need mobileme to do remote wipe or management. Look harder.
- Multitasking apps
I don't get this, coming from a BB person. A symbian or winmo person, maybe, but a BB user?
What do you want out of multitasking? Is it that you want to run Folding@Home on your iPhone? Of course not - running background tasks to use unutilized CPU time the way you would on a PC, but on a battery powered device, would be stupid.
Is it that you want the equivalent of services or daemons that customize the behavior of the OS? You've got that on winmo and symbian, but BB isn't really any more customizable than the iPhone.
Is it that you want to be able to use an app, switch to another, and then come back to the first? I can do that now on my iPhone. A well designed app should restart where you left it. Not all do, but that's just tough, and it's the price you pay for not getting out-of-memory errors the way you do on some other platforms, or having to use memory paging and virtual memory, in which case coming back to background tasks will be as slow or slower than restarting them.
- API: Apple still doesn't release abilities for developers to control the phone more, like how to turn off 3G? You have to click, click, click, click, click, watching the screen the whole time. It's a battery killer, and it should be easier to turn off based on environment, like maybe with profiles. Same for bluetooth, wifi
Leaving bluetooth on makes effectively no difference to the battery life of any device, period. The transmit power is too low compared the the power draw for even the most modestly powered mobile CPUs and microcontrollers. Unless, that is, you've left the device in discoverable mode, which you shouldn't be doing anyways for security reasons. As for turning off wifi or 3g, why would you WANT to? It's an iPhone - an internet communicator. If it was a simple email device like a BB, and it wasn't transferring more than a few 100k a month, I could understand wanting this, but really, why?
- Multiple email accounts: on the iPhone it takes 4-5 clicks to go from one email inbox to another, which can be very annoying when you have multiple email, like work and personal. BB? 3 or less, if you count each trackwheel motion.
- Ability to see phone calls, texts, and emails all in one inbox
Again, the flip side of this is that it doesn't display any of these things particularly well. The last time I used a BB, for example, RIM still hadn't figured out threaded SMS.
- iPhone is easier to learn, but you hit a productivity/efficiency limit pretty quick. BB is harder to learn, but allows the power user to gain a LOT of power.
...if you get that power from reading email. When someone texts or emails me, I like being able to fact-check or follow-up on the web. The BB has a piss-poor web browser, so I couldn't realistically do that. The iPhone is a 'stream-of-consciousness' device, far more so than any BB. You can leap back and forth between the web, email, sms, social media, etc much more easily than you can on the BB. If the email is the BB's great strength, the web is it's great weakness.
Watch the unneccessary apostrophe's
They're not BlackBerry's... they're BlackBerrys.
Don't think so
Sorry but this just isn't true. All these people aren't coming from blackberries, they are the people who had RAZRs and are trading them in for an iPhone because the price has come down now. Its also 100% true its as much of a fashion statement than anything else, just like all of Apples products.
I disagree,why would people
I disagree,why would people who still have razrs(my mom for instance) or other non-smartphones upgrade to a confusing feature-packed iphone and an extra $30 a month for a data plan? Most non-tech savvy users will keep their phones, as they do all that they require(calling/texting). The majority of people upgrading to the iphone are those who currently have smart phones and either want better features/speed, or are buying them as a fashion statement.
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