Ignition: Edge of the shot

By Ross Rubin published on May 8, 2011 8: 30 PM each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. As much as their countries of origin, Apple and RIM share much in common, but the contrast in important ways. Both companies were among the few that produce their own software for their mobile phones. Apple, a pioneer of personal computing, sees the expansion of the market in smartphones. RIM, a pioneer of smartphone, sees the expansion of the mobile computing market. Looking at offer tablets, Apple has been just as firm in denouncing a 7-inch screen as RIM has been defending, the latter says that it is about creating a portable device with the Guide.

Apple designs products for consumers that have relevance to companies. RIM designs products for companies that have relevance for consumers. This also has been evident with the Guide, that it has taken the heat for its lack of native email and calendar options. RIM consciously put on hold because he wanted to appease the CIOs concerned about data theft, although it meant a launch product less attractive for consumers. Another parallel: RIM has suffered delays of AT & T in support of bridge, as Apple wrestled with AT & T tethering support on the iPhone.

In fact, when Steve Ballmer took the stage at BlackBerry World in Orlando, it brought back memories of a scene that leads out of pirate films of Silicon Valley, when Bill Gates appeared on screen in the Macworld Expo in 1997 to announce an agreement that would make Internet Explorer the default Mac browser. Fourteen years later, Google has replaced Netscape as a rival to Microsoft and the BlackBerry has become a prize of Bing.

Despite some errors and loss of significant market share, RIM is far from the State of the financial crisis that Apple was in the back. However, in both cases, the appearance of a CEO of Microsoft has been a sign of confidence in a platform that Microsoft competes. Do so, if Apple could throw own of what Steve Jobs has called his "near-death experience", RIM regain its luster lost too? He has hit a pothole on the road in the middle of a transition or is in free fall as Nokia was before your recent revision?

Apple has an advantage demonstrated in comparison with its neighbor to the North, and has been a keen sense of the moment. As the big cats which named its Mac operating systems, Apple has shown a strong pattern of attack in the industry at the right time. When the appropriate components are quite affordable, Apple wraps in a delicious layer of the user experience to drive mass adoption. RIM, meanwhile, has seen since growth from vanish challenge iPhone and its competitor mercenary Android.

However, one reason for optimism is the punch one-two procurement of RIM QNX, who manages the agile plumbing, low level of the BlackBerry Tablet OS, and TAT, which is to give the user interface RIM historically efficient but boring with a sense of imaginationfantasy, and exploration. We have seen the beginnings of RIM Assembly of these parts in shows such as the implementation of the Guide to scrapbooking and also in the renewal of the calculator workaday with flourishes such as see the history of calculation getting uprooted as a role of a harvest add computer. Here, RIM - like Apple - controls his own destiny. In contrast to the position of Nokia with Windows Phone 7, need not, for example, to maintain reigns in a direction of user interface to avoid disturbing coherence with competitors.

The challenge, as it was recognized several times in the world of BlackBerry, is time. The main components are there. RIM is now competing races to synthesize their acquisitions. You must create a competitive experience with space to grow through a series of their own core applications, those of its developers and, most importantly, expand from a platform of dual-core Tablet PC in a revitalized line of BlackBerry phones. The sand in the hourglass is the willingness of companies and clients of the company which RIM says still have strong demand for its products and the confidence in its approach.

Ross Rubin (@ rossrubin) is executive director of industry analysis of technology of consumption in market research and analysis firm NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are their own.

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