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Businesses Cellphones

Smartphone Battle Is Shaping Up As RIM Vs. Apple 261

Posted by kdawson from the typing-on-glass dept.
TeknoFin notes a piece in the NYTimes on the fight RIM finds itself in as the smartphone market shifts to a consumer focus, impelled by the iPhone. For the last 10 years RIM has dominated a smartphone market consisting mainly of email-obsessed corporate professionals. Analysts wonder if RIM can hold on to their lead as their strengths — such as cozy relations with cell carriers worldwide — are diluted by new entrants Apple and Google, who are "vocally trying to dislodge the carriers from the nexus of the North American wireless market." One of RIM's strengths in the corporate market has been their security. Yet Apple executives have said that one-third of Fortune 500 companies were interested in giving iPhones — with all their known and potential security holes — to their employees.
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Smartphone Battle Is Shaping Up As RIM Vs. Apple More

Smartphone Battle Is Shaping Up As RIM Vs. Apple

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  • The world is not the U.S. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mvdwege ( 243851 ) <mvdwege@mail.com> on Sunday April 27, 2008 @06:26PM (#23217630) Homepage Journal

    And again U.S.-centric media act as if the U.S. market is representative for the whole world.

    Here's a hint: RIM is only a player in push-mail smartphones. Worldwide, the major smartphone platform is Symbian. Apple may as well not exist in the world-wide market. I have seen a colleagues iPhone, and it is a nice little machine, but it is currently geared more for multimedia use than as a business smartphone. It will take Apple at least one more generation to actually become a threat to Symbians dominance of the marketplace.

    Of course, compared to the other bit players in the marketplace, if one company can pull off a landslide shift in marketshare, it will be Apple. It helps that they understand Marketing extremely well.

    Mart

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by furball ( 2853 )
      What makes a smartphone suitable for business usage versus multimedia usage? What do business users need that's different than a non-business user?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nullav ( 1053766 )
        A keypad comes to mind.

      • Re:The world is not the U.S. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Sunday April 27, 2008 @07:05PM (#23217776) Homepage
        Security, ability to install bespoke applications, secure VPN, secure wireless, exchange integration, ability to dial out on multiple numbers...

        Apple is trying to address some of these with firmware 2.0 but there's one key that businesses look for - the ability to negotiate very competative deals with the providers because they can play them off one another and get much lower than the published prices (one place I was at the mere threat of going elsewhere usually got them insanely good deals - that was a big contract). Apple has yet to address this, as there is currently nowhere else to go, and iphone is a monoculture.. if you port your apps to it you're stuck with it.
        • Quick guide to iPhoneExchange integration:
          Step 1: Turn on IMAP support.
          Step 2: There is no step 2.

          Seriously, complaining that the iPhone doesn't have MAPI support is like complaining that DOS doesn't read files on 400k floppies formatted with MFS.

      • Re:The world is not the U.S. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gtx ( 204552 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @08:59PM (#23218544) Homepage
        I personally don't give a fuck about ringtones or cameras or the ability to play mp3s/videos/games on my phone. At all. My priorities, as a business-centric phone user, are in this order:

        1) Phone calls
        2) Email
        3) Web-browser (and that's expendable, I just like to be able to google things on the road.)

        Everything else is pretty much useless to me, whereas I can see where 17 year old girls want their phones to be toys more than anything else. Sure, my phone (blackberry 8830) doesn't have a camera on it, but damn if it doesn't have stable firmware which is made to do exactly what I want it to do with amazing consistency.

        Fuck multimedia. All I want is something to handle my email without a hiccup.

        • You are obviously a Luddite. How dare you come to /.!

          I agree with you. I have a Treo 700p and I spend most of my time using the phone and email (neither are as nice as the BB though). When I start cursing my phone is when either function flakes on me.

          Sure, I like the other proggies I have on there--games, doc readers, and other distractions, but my next phone will be simpler and hopefully stabler.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gtx ( 204552 )
            Yeah, I think that cell phone manufactures started catering too much to 17 year old girls as of late.

            I used to want a treo back when Handspring was its own company. Then palm had to come and balls everything up. I hear that the email isn't too bad, but the BB email is pretty perfect. Anytime I've ever thought "I wish this thing did...(fill in the blank)" it turns out that it did do what I wanted, I just never knew it.

            But yeah, I probably am a bit of a luddite by /. standards.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Eli Gottlieb ( 917758 )
              Nah, it's just that the cellphone market has been catering to 17-year-old girls.

              I'm a 19-year-old male, and all I want my phone to do is make calls and, just as importantly, receive calls. I have a laptop that does email, music (so does my iPod), video (so does my iPod), gaming, and document editing.

              Fuck expensive convergence devices. The iPhone is only really interesting because of its user interface.
      • Dude. They can get pr0n on their work phone!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by mindslut ( 1152625 )
      I use Blackberry/RIM as a corporate user, and have seen the iPhone in action a fair amount.

      I think the iPhone interface has a lot more potential, and should set the new standard. I think other business users are wondering why they can't have that quality iPhone interface - Blackberries fall short in terms of the information display corporate users often need.

      I agree with your point about Apple being that rare company that could pull off a landslide - having a better mousetrap (or the appearance of one - no

    • Not entirely true (Score:3, Interesting)

      by goldcd ( 587052 )
      Recent versions of Windows mobile support push from your exchange server - and once it's got a reasonable UI stuck over the top of the god-awful defaults - it makes quite a nice phone. Reason Blackberries have taken off is that they're well and truly owned by the employer. I can't a VPN token out of my employers for love nor money for my phone. They like Blackberries and if I want my email on the go, that's what I get. They give me a stitched up Blackberry (I can't fiddle with the settings to even add anoth

    • And again U.S.-centric media act as if the U.S. market is representative for the whole world.

      This is /. American-centric is what it is all about.

      Here's a hint: RIM is only a player in push-mail smartphones. Worldwide, the major smartphone platform is Symbian. Apple may as well not exist in the world-wide market.

      See above

      I have seen a colleagues iPhone, and it is a nice little machine, but it is currently geared more for multimedia use than as a business smartphone.

      Being "geared more for multimedia than (for) business" has never stopped my company from adopting silly pieces of hardware/software. I bet the same is true elsewhere.

      It will take Apple at least one more generation to actually become a threat to Symbians dominance of the marketplace.

      You're probably correct. Apple is, above all things, patient.

      Of course, compared to the other bit players in the marketplace, if one company can pull off a landslide shift in marketshare, it will be Apple. It helps that they understand Marketing extremely well.

      I don't know about this. I'm not sure Apple ever really saw the iPhone as a contender against RIM/Symbian, but now that the opportunity presents itself will they "market" directly to their new user base (read

    • It helps that they understand Marketing extremely well.

      It helps more that the iPhone makes the competition look sick. Seriously. Everyone else had 25 years to do something slick with the cell phone. Why is it that when Apple leads the way (again) so much ink is spilled trying to defend the status quo, and or trying to pretend that the iPhone is selling simply because of marketing?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by mvdwege ( 243851 )

        You just proved the point: the only thing the iPhone has over the competition is slick looks, in actual useful features it is below par. And you buy it as if it is a huge advantage. Given the context (business use), this is a prime example of someone drinking the Marketing Kool-Aid.

        Mart

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by funkdancer ( 582069 )

      Here's a hint: RIM is only a player in push-mail smartphones.

      Thanks for clearing that up! As an Australian/Norwegian person, my first thoughts were... "what the hell is (a) RIM?".

      My second thought was, "what the hell is an iPhone?". Actually, that was mainly in jest, but you can't buy those non-3G things legitimately here --- and they're non-3G --- so why bother.

      (Yours Truly is patiently waiting for the N96 to be released so that I have a proper Symbian smartphone with an awesome camera, lots of storage and a 3G connection for my N810 tablet to bluetooth into.)

  • iphones (Score:5, Insightful)

    by perlchild ( 582235 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @06:26PM (#23217632)
    The iphone, warts and all, appears to be an actual platform. It's actually usable. Every blackberry owner I've seen so far sees it as a mail client, there are very few third party apps and they're not widely known.

    The iphone will have third party apps(thanks to the controversy that it didn't) and people will know about them. I'd say that's a good reason to worry at RIM.

    I'll miss my palm when my company gets to me, but I hope they replace the blackberries they have with iphones, not force the blackberries onto us.

    • Re:iphones (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Sunday April 27, 2008 @06:51PM (#23217718) Homepage
      The iphone, warts and all, appears to be an actual platform. It's actually usable. Every blackberry owner I've seen so far sees it as a mail client, there are very few third party apps and they're not widely known.

      I think that's the key to the "battle". While RIM and Symbian are powerhouses from a corporate standpoint, they've never had the crossover attraction that Palm had and WinCE has to a lesser degree -- lots of useful third-party apps that make you want to carry it with you in your personal life, not just when your job tells you to.
      • Though I can't speak for RIM, Symbian has LOADS of third party software.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by NMerriam ( 15122 )
          Certainly compared to most any other phone platform, Symbian has a huge 3rd party software base. But compared to Pocket PC/Windows Mobile or Palm before the breakup, it's still fairly professional and geek oriented.

          Of course, you could rightly ask how many different calendar apps or video players or hentai strip poker games someone really needs on a platform. I think the expectation is that the iPhone will be able to encompass more of the traditionally PDA-bound software that doesn't work so well on small s
      • I agree. I know maybe one person that bought a blackberry on their own. Most people bought Treos, and that's shifting to iPhones as they upgrade.
        I did notice a lot of people that bought iPhones had previously owned a standard phone. They were aware that things like a Treo existed, but never took the plunge. From my observation they use the email and web browser extensively.... not just the built-in iPod functionality.
        For the record, i do know a lot of freelancers in a few different fields, so having constan

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rovaani ( 20023 )

        While RIM and Symbian are powerhouses from a corporate standpoint, they've never had the crossover attraction that Palm had and WinCE has to a lesser degree -- lots of useful third-party apps that make you want to carry it with you in your personal life, not just when your job tells you to.

        Umm, what? The Symbian 3rd-party software ecosystem is quite healthy despite the somewhat draconian signing issues. Considering that at the moment you have to jailbreak your iPhone to get any meaningful amount of soft

    • Well, my 7105t runs a few handy applications that I like:

      - Google Mobile Maps 2.x,which BTW sucks bigtime. My Location has improved nothing, but I digress.

      - MidpSSH, a clever and useful SSH client. I can work with my Fedora box quite nicely, though it does have its drawbacks. Much better than nothing!

      - Gmail. Almost as cool as push mail. In fact, I may ditch BlackBerry and use Gmail as a semi-push client. It runs background and pulls mail as it appears.

      - Texas Hold'em King II, which isn't oficially on

  • Dont forget... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gigne ( 990887 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @06:28PM (#23217644) Homepage Journal
    HTC make plenty of excellent Smartphones. A lot of companies are giving their staff these Windows Mobile devices as they are cheap and have push email from an Exchange server.

    Not particularly a fan of Windows mobile, but it does the job well enough to make this a 3 horse race.

    • HTC make plenty of excellent Smartphones.

      As an HTC-phone owner I'd say: No. Hardwarewise they are at best of medium quality.

      Not particularly a fan of Windows mobile, but it does the job well enough to make this a 3 horse race.

      My twoyear-experience with Windows mobile is what makes me want to get an iPhone. Unfotunately prices and contracts in Germany suck, so it will be a grey US-import for me with jailbreaking. I'm just waiting for the new model ...

  • New jobs (Score:5, Funny)

    by mistersooreams ( 811324 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @06:28PM (#23217654) Homepage
    So, with this expansion in the market, there should be a whole lot more RIM jobs available. Err, and Apple jobs. Obviously.

  • And how did Aple arrive at this number? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) * on Sunday April 27, 2008 @06:30PM (#23217670) Homepage Journal

    Yet Apple executives have said that one-third of Fortune 500 companies were interested in giving iPhones â" with all their known and potential security holes â" to their employees.
    My guess is that someone at Apple is either pulling this out of their arse, or it's from some sort of survey of Fortune 500 executives -- most of which, even the Cx0s (where x is in [IT]) -- have very little knowledge of IT in general.

    Most of their IT people -- those with real IT knowledge -- would be telling them "No, no. Bad plan. No internal central management, no internal patch management, doesn't fit our security model, bad, bad, bad!!!"

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 )
      What they probably said was they'd consider trialling it, which is only fair. Give one or two employees them for a few days and if they come back to your office begging for their blackberries back you end the trial right there.

      I'm surprised the figure is so low - it means that 2/3rds of fortune 500 companies wouldn't even consider a trial.. and that's gotta hurt.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Did anyone remember how "IT people with IT knowledge" forced migrations to Windows in min 90's, promising cheaper, better supported, homogenous solution despite users' outrage of the forced migration [a famous example was NASA Goddard SFC forced migration]?. The end result was sloppy insecure networks infested with malwares, a ballooning IT staff, more expensive solution despite cheaper initial cost, longer downtime, less productive users and so on. Now, I am not saying that all IT people are bad, but many
    • My guess is that someone at Apple is either pulling this out of their arse, or it's from some sort of survey of Fortune 500 executives

      Actually, it's from their quarterly earnings conference call last week. Apple reported that over one-third of the Fortune 500 has applied to Apple's iPhone 2.0 beta Enterprise program, along with over 400 higher-education institutions.

  • What RIM and Apple? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 27, 2008 @06:31PM (#23217690)
    In the European market both RIM and Apple are almost non-existent, I'd guess they got fraction of a percent together. Nokia is who got the smart phone market share here, along with some smaller companies, like Ericsson. After all, a smart phone without 0.5 Mbps+ internet connection, preferably flat fee, sucks when browsing "web 2.0" sites. That's something neither Apple or RIM delivers right now.
    • It's been said that if Nokia never sold a phone in the US ever again they'd *still* be the largest phone manufacturer in the world.

      I've never seen a RIM phone close up and even iphone doesn't seem to be that popular.. I've obviously seen one (I have one, and I sent 3 to australia for my boss and his friends), but it's telling when you're in the pub doing the very blokish thing of comparing phones (bluetoothing ringtones and pictures to each other.. alas I couldn't participate as I had an iphone, which of co
    • btw. don't count out other players like Motorolla and LG. LG especially have come from nowhere in the last year to some of the nicest phones I've ever played with. Which reminds me I meed to have a play with the viewty some day...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtx ( 204552 )
        Eh, Motorola products just suck. I've owned nearly every moto handset from the MicroTAC to the RAZR and they just went right to shit somewhere around the 710. I didn't learn my lesson until after the 815. Motorola can't be trusted to make a stable product anymore.

        On the other hand, LG's been making great hardware for years now. They put out Verizon's first camera phone five years ago (the vx6000.)

  • Quite happy with my HTC Titan (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wrath0fb0b ( 302444 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @07:05PM (#23217774)
    Yeah, it's a goofy name and it runs Windows Mobile but I've really taken a liking to it. EVDO kicks the shit out of EDGE (with RevA, I have clocked 1Mb/s) and built-in GPS is a real convenience. No push email, but you can have it query Exchange, IMAP or POP3 every 5 minutes if you like. The keyboard is also quite useful, IMO.

    More important than the hardware, however, is the huge library of 3rd party software that is written for WinMo. I've never been unable to find an application that does what I want. Add to it the fact that it's pretty easy to jump in and write your own code (C++ or C#, your choice) and it adds up to a very appealing package.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Titan [wikipedia.org]

  • Biasd and false (Score:4, Informative)

    by Coolhand2120 ( 1001761 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @07:30PM (#23217908)
    Wow an article on /. with some misleading information! I'm so surprised.
    First let's look at the market share.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone [wikipedia.org]

    Symbian 65%
    Windows Mobile 12%
    RIM BlackBerry 11%
    IPhone 7%
    Linux 5%

    Looks like TFA just picked a few from the bottom of the market share list for Q4 '07 and called them the new front runners!
    Kinda hard to discount WM with %12, and with Nvidia's new [engadgetmobile.com] processor for WM (yes it plays quake 3) for mobile phones it's a shoe in as an IPhone killer. Apple keeps locking up their platform more and more: no browsers, music players, applications that run in the background, all because apple doesn't want competition on their phone.

    ----Digression---
    Didn't MS get sued for being a monopoly when it included a browser? Somthing you need if you want to get another browser or anything of the Internet (I guess you can use telnet). They didn't say "no browsers but ours" they just included it for free. Apple specifically states that you can't make a browser on their IPhone OS and everyone looks the other way? What a bunch of bias bullshit.----EODigression---

    I think it's way to early to say what "two" big players are going to be left, at this point it's obvious it's not going to just two, there are 4 or 5 or more and I doubt the "big" one's are going to be Apple and RIM, Apple doesnt care a rats ass about security (Safari accepts invalid 3rd party certs 100% of the time, and don't get me started on the IPhone itself.), and RIM's idea of 'PUSH EMAIL' is: "buy this $5000 software from us to give your email server "RIM PUSH EMAIL" and god help you if their racket of a service fails, not to mention their complete lack of hardware innovation in the last decade. IMHO Apple and RIM seem like the least promising.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mkiwi ( 585287 )
      Wow an article on /. with some misleading information! I'm so surprised.


      Yes, because Wikipedia has always been known to be more accurate for this type of data than any other source.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Kinda hard to discount WM with %12

      I dunno, seems pretty easy to me when it's been out for YEARS, and the ten month-old iPhone already has more than half its marketshare.

    • Re:Biasd and false (Score:4, Informative)

      by DurendalMac ( 736637 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @08:36PM (#23218398)
      Um, I use Safari, and if it gets a 3rd party cert it can't verify, then it will, by default, notify you and ask if you want to accept it or not. Second, the iPhone is a phone platform with a small percentage of the market, not an OS with over 90% of the market. On top of that, MS got their asses burned by threatening to cut off OEM licenses for anyone who tried to bundle Netscape with their computers. On top of THAT, back then a PC was about the only way you could browse the internet. Now you can do it on your phone, so there are other options and Apple is not trying to keep competitors out because competitors can easily set up browsers on many, many other devices. Try thinking about your argument before you splatter it on the screen.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Coolhand2120 ( 1001761 )
        I've thought about this argument for a long, long time and Apple locking certain software out because it directly competes with their software IS A BAD THING. If you think locking people out because you don't want to compete is good, then have fun with your IPhone.

        Um, I use Safari, and if it gets a 3rd party cert it can't verify, then it will, by default, notify you and ask if you want to accept it or not.

        I can make certs all day long on my own cert server and Safari will eat them up! Because the ce

        • So in safari when it says "HTTPS" and the cert was issued by "CRACKS.AM" it will look the same as the "HTTPS" when its issued by verisign! Now if this goes over your head, maybe you should read up on it a bit, but don't tell me I'm wrong.

          You might want to read up yourself, slick. A self-signed certificate is every bit as cryptographically secure as one signed by a big CA. It isn't trusted by the browser for good reason, but the encryption is unaffected.

          The site's identity isn't verified by some "trusted"

          • The argument is not if the cypher is secure, it's if the person you're talking to is whom they claim to be.

            The whole point of a verified cert is to verify the person with whom you are buying something from can be held accountable for their website's claims. The verification process has different levels, the lowest requiring a active phone number, the highest requiring a tax license and a notarized document from an attorney authenticating your claim to the online business with active fax/mail/email and a
    • "Didn't MS get sued for being a monopoly when it included a browser?"

      No, they got their asses sued for abusing their monopoly position.

      "Somthing you need if you want to get another browser or anything of the Internet (I guess you can use telnet)."

      Or they could have let OEMs decide what default browser they wanted to install (before IE became "bundled" with Windows). Instead, they strong-armed them into installing IE or face increased license costs. See my first quote.

      "They didn't say "no browser
  • Symbian devices rule the world. Followed by Windows Mobile.
     
    Blackberry is popular in North America but are practically unheard of in Asia and are just recently making strides in Europe. The iPhone has made an impact in new phone design, but Apple's still got a long way to go.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nxtw ( 866177 )
      It is important to consider that Windows Mobile devices are more popular in the United States than Symbian devices, in part because there are plenty of CDMA Windows Mobile devices.

  • Different solutions for different applications (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lohphat ( 521572 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @07:51PM (#23218060)
    The reason RIM has the business market is that they have features which mate it scalable for the enterprise, every other player hasn't matched features for that target market.

    The ability to brick lost phones, encrypt contents, apply IT security profiles, provision remotely over the air, sync to the server to make the hand-held expendable, data modem for the laptop, etc. And there are apps for the BB for many major ERP and sales tools. The key business integrations for the road warrior are already there.

    I think the iPhone et al are cool as a *personal* tool/toy but more often than not, they don't scale into a company where protection of IP and low TCO are mandated. For your personal use, you can absorb all the geekiness you want because the support required starts and ends with yourself.

    Try to deploy 1000 iPhones in a company and you're going to hemorrhage money.

    RIM isn't as sexy but it's a stable, known, scalable, and for the most part, secure solution.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Wrath0fb0b ( 302444 )

      The ability to brick lost phones, encrypt contents, apply IT security profiles, provision remotely over the air, sync to the server to make the hand-held expendable, data modem for the laptop, etc.

      I believe that Windows Mobile 6 can do all of those things except the first. Of course, if you want Exchange sync you'll have to pay for enough Exchange licenses but that expensive option looks pretty frugal compared to RIM's exorbitant service. OTA provisioning, fine-grained control over allowed executables, encryptions, tethering are all there (and can all be pushed).

      I'm not trying to diss Blackberry (never used one, so that would be quite foolish), just noticed that you listed a lot of features that I

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by metlin ( 258108 )
      Very well said - couldn't agree more.

      As a Blackberry user, I looked at getting an iPhone, but a brief conversation with IT basically told me that I'd lose all the advantages of having a smartphone with an iPhone (i.e. can't do push email, can't sync my calendar, no VPN, can't implement security etc).

      I gave up at that point. While the iPhone is a very sexy and sleek toy, it's just that - a toy gadget. From a corporate user's utilitarian perspective, a Blackberry kicks ass.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kleen13 ( 1006327 )
      I couldn't agree more. I was "forced" to integrate a BES server into our org and I was Very Reluctant to do so. I went from a active x toolbar applet to support 1 phone (ok, so I had to pull off some firewall magic) to a full blown server app, to support now 2 phones. As soon as I added the users and saw that I could brick the phones in aboot 12 seconds flat, I was sold. Sure, $100 per CAL is a bit much, but it's not in MY budget, and I can control it from home. Oh ya, I have since added many more pho
  • If the smartphone battle is shaping up as RIM vs Apple, why is it that everyone I know carries a Treo... I've seen all kinds from the 600/650 that is still Palm based to the 700WX and beyond... It is almost funny. All the executives at my office have the RIM machines - NONE of which they bought themselves... The people who don't rate a Blackberry for free from the company almost all buy either a generic cell phone, or more commonly, some kind of Treo...
    • I'd have to disagree that Treos are commonplace, as I rarely ever see mroe than one a day: mine. I bought a used Treo 650 in January, and now I'm not sure how I ever lived without it. I may upgrade to a newer with wifi eventually, but I love the 650. (It does have a few quirks: it deosn't seem to like certain naming schemes for audio files, and crashes, and sometimes checking the SD card causes it to crash. It is also rather bulky for a 2008 cell phone. Annoying, but I can deal with it if those are the only
  • Blackberry... who?

    "For the last 10 years RIM has dominated the smartphone market" ... right. Blackberry has never, and will never, dominate any smartphone market whatsoever.

    Symbian is #1 in users, and Windows Mobile is #1 in usability. Blackberry is a closed system and will ultimately completely fail. So will the iPhone, by the way, aside from a personal(!!) gadget.

    It's virtually impossible to develop anything for the Blackberry. Add to that thats it's features are insanely expensive compared to the alterna

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by shmlco ( 594907 )
      Just an FYI, but about 95% of my iPhone internet/email use occurs at work, home, or in a couple of local restaurants... ALL of which are WiFi enabled. So while EDGE is a bit pokey elsewhere, by and large it doesn't matter, because event though 3G beats EDGE, WiFi beats 3G.

      "Windows Mobile is #1 in usability."

      (ROTFLMAO) How in the world did you manage to say that with a straight face?

      "There are almost an infinite number of apps available for Symbian and Windows Mobile ..."

      Yeah, but how many file managers and

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nxtw ( 866177 )

        Just an FYI, but about 95% of my iPhone internet/email use occurs at work, home, or in a couple of local restaurants... ALL of which are WiFi enabled. So while EDGE is a bit pokey elsewhere, by and large it doesn't matter, because event though 3G beats EDGE, WiFi beats 3G.

        Wifi may beat 3G in performance, but there are significant downsides for anyone who does not spend most of their time in the same few places. I can maintain the same 3G network connection for miles and miles. There's no need to risk conn

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by metlin ( 258108 )

        Just an FYI, but about 95% of my iPhone internet/email use occurs at work, home, or in a couple of local restaurants... ALL of which are WiFi enabled. So while EDGE is a bit pokey elsewhere, by and large it doesn't matter, because event though 3G beats EDGE, WiFi beats 3G.

        You probably don't travel much. :)

        About 30% of my email happens in the airports, another 10% in hotels and restaurants and about 45% on client sites where I can't really plonk down my notebook and start checking my mail. Perhaps 10% of my

    • Re:Blackberry? WHO? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gtx ( 204552 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @09:35PM (#23218780) Homepage
      Blackberry has 11% of the global market even though 3/4 of its users are in North America. Windows Mobile has 12% of the global market and its users are fucking everywhere.

      As a result, Blackberry dominates the North American smartphone market.

      You may find this to be in direct conflict to your statement "Blackberry has never, and will never, dominate any smartphone market whatsoever."

      Your post is a whole bunch of nonsense. Yes, Symbian has market dominance outside of North America. However, even by your own admission, "They may have some extra technical management stuff, but all of that will be in the next WM (and probably Symbian, too) release"

      Have you ever considered that the cost of using Blackberry is worth it to some companies so that they can have these features right now on hardware that isn't a goddamned toy?

      So please spare us your elitist bullshit. I don't give a good goddamn if you're from Europe or if you have the best smartphones over there. This doesn't make any difference if you don't have any goddamned clue what you're talking about.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 )
      You had me until you said you laughed at everyone who bought the iPhone without it having 3G.

      I bought the iPhone, and yes disappointed it didn't have 3G support, but this is a 1st gen product from Apple and I could forgive them for not having EVERYTHING they wanted to have for their 1st gen launch.

      Was it they didn't want to deliver 3G? I doubt it.
      I think it was time and moeny for development + possible licensing costs from AT&T and other carriers for the tech to use the network.

      Makes sense to see if you

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jrumney ( 197329 )

        Was it they didn't want to deliver 3G? I doubt it. I think it was time and moeny for development + possible licensing costs from AT&T and other carriers for the tech to use the network.

        I'd be prepared to put money on the licensing issues being the major reason for Apple avoiding 3G in their first generation product. Not just the cost (which comes from the chip manufacturers who hold patents over the various technologies used, not the carriers), but the uncertainty of it all with lawsuits going on all

    • While I used to love my old Nokia brick (most usable plain-jane cell phone I ever owned), I am at a complete loss of words with people's love of Symbian smart phones!

      I tried the N95 and a couple other devices a year or two ago, and found everything to be abysmal hardware and clunky software as I went through Nokia and Sony-Ericson's flagship stores. The WinCE world was clearly worse, but offered better compatibility with the office.

      But... what is great about the iPhone and some of HTC's models (by assumpti

      • iPhones screen is 320x480, that's not high resolution, and not so much difference to normal smart phones which sport 320x240 screen. The reason why people treat Apples screen as it would be high resolution screen has more to do with their software and design decisions they have made on displaying their user interface and web content. In here Nokia and others are behind, they usually have crammed too much to screen making it confusing.

        However.. Nokia and other phone manufacturers have better hardware and la

        • "iPhones screen is 320x480, that's not high resolution, and not so much difference to normal smart phones which sport 320x240 screen."

          A factor of two is a very significant difference in resolution.

          NB: The rest of your post reads like an ad for Nokia.

          • Well, when the normal resolution of an laptop or an desktop computer is 1024x768, a 320x480 compared to that is minimal. The point here is that the normal content is too large. The iPhones displays web content by scaling it down, so it looks like you are viewing the screen normally, when in the matter of fact you are not. As I said earlier, the design decisions that Apple has done are great and they have had much initial success because of this. Still, a 320x480 screen is small, and hasn't got a high resolu

            • "Well, when the normal resolution of an laptop or an desktop computer is 1024x768, a 320x480 compared to that is minimal"

              A desktop or laptop computer is not a mobile phone, so this statement is as specious as me claiming that laptop and desktop computers have minimal resolution because IMAX cinemas are 10000x7000.

              "The point here is that the normal content is too large."

              And normal IMAX content is too large for laptop and desktop computers. There is a simple reason for this: laptop and desktop computers aren'
    • Windows Mobile is #1 in usability

      The correct spelling is "instability". Consult your local grammar nazi.

      Or get an SE p1i, if its a smart phone you want.

  • But only wiht AT&T (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hal9000(jr) ( 316943 ) on Sunday April 27, 2008 @09:19PM (#23218676)
    My biggest gripe with the iPhone is that it runs only on AT&T and I am not going to plunk down my cold, hard cash to buy an iPhone, just to hack it for other networks.

    You can get BB and Treo's for nearly all providers.
  • "with all their known and potential security holes"

    Yeah. That's just complete trolling. If it wasn't meant to be, it shows an amazing naiveté regarding Information Security, Vulnerability Research and the economics of Information Risk. Every platform has many "known and potential security holes". This, of course, is not a direct correlation with information risk, and I'd hesitate to even ascribe significant meaning to any vulnerability reports on any phone platform, regardless of Operating Sy
  • in the Kitchen!

    Normally when I am cooking I clip this little timer on my lapel so I can leave the kitchen and go do other things, like check my email or look for the cats.

    After I got my iPhone I found the feature I used the most is the TIMER (under the Clock function).
    I set that puppy and then head outside with a Gin & Tonic.

    no funky timer clipped to my lapel any longer!
    and it vibrates too in case I am hosting a party and I can't hear the thing go off.

    AND ..it's a cell phone too! Can you
  • Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. Why is that the threat that the smartphone presents to corporate security doesn't grab headlines until Apple makes a phone?
    • "Why is that the threat that the smartphone presents to corporate security doesn't grab headlines until Apple makes a phone?"

      Because boring articles with no useful content in them can get web hits by riding the coat-tails of the Apple buzz machine.

      Headline: "Analysts Speculate That Smart Phones Have Potential Security Flaws Because They Run Software".

      Result: I wonder if there are any singing dogs on YouTube.

      Headline: "Analysts Claim iPhone Is A Potential Security Risk"

      Result: click through lots of ad-laden
  • This idea that there is a "battle" shaping up is an indication of how corporate culture has poisoned the public consciousness. Any halfwit can realise that there is ample space for both Apple and RIM to make quite a nice pile of money without ever worrying about what the other is doing. Microsoft "won" the desktop and what did that get us? Stagnation in technology, and malware as a norm.

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