Quote:
Originally Posted by Drillbit
Apple's space remains limited to those who deem it acceptable to use a touch screen phone. Apple will never intrude into the hardware QWERTY space without an Iphone that features a fixed qwerty keyboard. But Apple's dogma of conceptual purity will surely prevent such a product.
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This is apparently a big segment as everyone is doing a purely touch screen smart phone now, even RIM. And don't underestimate Apple's anticipation of what the consumer wants. The iphone has only been out a short time and its pretty much re defined the smart phone market.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drillbit
What happened in the market is that RIM laid waste to the candybar qwerty market. In so doing just blew away Palm's and Motorola's market on qwerty phones. The biggest casualties are Win Mo phones especially. Bolds and Curves just ate up through the Treos, Q9s and Blackjacks. HTC accounts for over 50% of WinMo phones, and only one of them is the bar qwerty type.
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This is more a problem with Win Mobile, which hasn't really been improved in years, then RIM's "superiority" in the segment. Up until a few years ago, it was Win Mobile, Blackberry OS, Palm OS and Symbian. Palm OS was ancient and Symbian wasn't big here in the states. Given the choice between WM and BB OS, it was pretty much a sure win for RIM. Times are changing, as the Android and the Palm Pre enter the market, the Blackberry OS is going to start looking like DOS compared to the other, more modern and more capable mobile OSs.
RIM needs to really innovate if they wish to survive. I look at the new models coming up and I really just see the same old, same old with some new minor features. Palm was like that, where each new model was pretty much the same as the old. It nearly sunk them and it is still too early to know if they will indeed come back. RIM is heading down this road and as Palm well knows you can go from #1 to the very bottom is a very short time.