@ WWDC: Is Apple’s 3G iPhone The BlackBerry-Killer?
By Tricia Duryee - Mon 09 Jun 2008 01:19 PM PST
With the unveiling of the 3G iPhone today, and with so many of the new features matching the strength of the RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) BlackBerry, it begs the question: will the 3G iPhone be the BlackBerry killer? Already, critics have been speculating that the iPhone will eat into RIM’s business, but now it seems inevitable. To be sure, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has a way to go. In the first quarter, Research In Motion sold the most smartphones in the U.S., garnering a 42 percent marketshare, easily beating Apple, which ranked second with a 20 percent marketshare, according to Gartner.
But Apple announced today that it is making significant progress. To date, it has sold 6 million iPhones, and with the price cut of the new 3G iPhone dropping to $199, and other enterprise-like features in the works, the difference between the flashy newcomer and the institutional BlackBerry seem to be fading.
Perhaps the biggest feature announced today that may scare BlackBerry is that Apple is enabling push support—something that up until now had been BlackBerry’s keystone offering. This means that a person can receive an email, get an alert, receive an update from eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) without having to be in the application, or without having to run it in the background. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) provides these features on Windows Mobile, but solves it by running the application in the background, which drains the battery and slows down the device’s performance. The push service will be available to enterprises in September, and available to developers next month.
This announcement led to Frank Mena, a research analyst of Envisioneering, who happened to be sitting next to me during the keynote to proclaim: “They took away the only advantage that BlackBerry had. They solved the Achilles heal.”
In addition to push, there’s other critical functions, like offering Microsoft Exchange via ActiveSync. Steve Jobs said during the keynote that already “35 percent of the Fortune 500” has participated in the beta tests. “Not so bad,” Jobs said to an applauding crowd. Another critical flaw in selling the iPhone to the enterprise was in the delivery of applications. Would a business customer have to go through iTunes to upload salesforce automation software? Apple solved that one, too, by launching a service just for the enterprise to roll-out software to employees.
RIM shouldn’t be worried only about the enterprise segment. Recently, the Canadian device maker has made a lot of progress into the “prosummer” market, and after today Apple appears to be catering to them, too. During the keynote, it unveiled “MobileMe,” which for $99 a year is being sold as “Exchange for the Rest of Us.” The Web cloud-service allows people to sync contacts, calendar, documents and pictures over the air wirelessly. And when paired up with its push technology—that should all happen behind the scenes as well.
There’s still one thing BlackBerry has that the iPhone doesn’t—keys. A lot of enterprise users, who type out lengthy emails, and notes, can’t see living without them. Will that be enough? Who knows? Apple still has to fulfill all the above promises and more. The market doesn’t seem to be scared. RIM jumped $2.71 a share, or 2 percent, to trade at $134.12 in afternoon trading.
