BlackBerry Doesn’t Rule The Business World After All!

With Apple taking the largest share of Smartphone sales this year, Dell has launched itself into the Smartphone and tablet market

Are the days of the CrackBerry numbered? It used to be that if you meant business, you had a BlackBerry, but recent numbers released by IDC (International Data Corporation), an IT and industry trend market research company, shows that RIM’s grasp might be slipping.

Top Five Smartphone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q3 2010 (Units in Millions)

From: http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=prUS22560610&sectionId=null&elementId=null&pageType=SYNOPSIS

With the release of the iPhone 4, and the verbal war between Steve Jobs and co-chief executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis came to a head earlier this summer during the infamous “Antennagate”, when Jobs compared the problems with the iPhone 4 with the BlackBerry 9700. The duo fired back on July 17^th saying that:

“Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage.

“One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.”

When the news broke that Apple had outsold BlackBerry, Jobs told investors “we’ve now passed RIM and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future,” and went on to say that RIM and its BlackBerry “must move beyond their area of strength and comfort into the unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software-platform company. I think it’s going to be a challenge for them to create a competitive platform and to convince developers to create apps for yet a third software platform after iOS and Android. With 300,000 apps on Apple’s App Store, RIM has a high mountain ahead of them to climb.”

Many in the industry saw this as unnecessary grandstanding from Jobs, and it was a movie that probably didn’t win him any friends.

We, here at Business World Australia, dug up this unaired BlackBerry commercial for the launch of the Storm showing how far back this spat really goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPB_kach5Lk

Dell has also announced two new products this fall, both of them strong contenders in the tablet and Smartphone markets. The Dell Streak comes with an Android OS, and has not developed quite the following that their Smartphone the new Dell Venue Pro features the highly touted Win7 OS, and so far has tech enthusiasts salivating at the feature set. Some of the highlights include:

• 4.1-inch WVGA AMOLED capacitive, multitouch display that enables easier navigation.
• Office Mobile built in, you can operate on-the-go as seamlessly as you would at the office.
• Take your gaming experience on the road with the phone that lets you play games on Xbox LIVE.
• 5 MP Camera with LED flash
• WiFi
• 8 -16GB Expandable Memory
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 1 GHz Processor
• 1400 mAh Battery

It would appear that the Venue Pro should be out by November 15^th for all major carriers.

With these market changes consumers can look forward to real completion between the major developers and technology firms. Though this may not be good news for BlackBerry, this is good news for the rest of us.