RIM plans to counter Apple's iPad with 'Blackpad' in November - Page 2

They will have to seriously improve their touch screen software, the Storm was a disaster!

It's not just perception, it's factually based. The raw materials going into Apple's machines and their assembly design process that they've patented in many areas allows Apple to be efficient in assembly, include higher quality capacitors, custom motherboards, higher quality batteries, etc., and get those high profit margins, where as the general PC clone vendor puts in bottom quality parts in assembly, capacitors, etc., until you suddenly see them come out with their one or two models that are their workstation class products and suddenly the cost is up there with Apple's, but with inferior design assembly, motherboard assembly with all the cables and non-passive backplane slots for hard drives, etc.

I think RIM is out of its depths. It's not just Apple that it has to contend with, but also HP, Google, Nokia and Samsung, all of which have deeper pockets and most of which have superior software creds.

Apple particularly looks unstoppable. With all the news about AntennaGate, and today's iP4 launch is a mad success in Canada:

http://www.ankleskater.com/pagemaker...20100730165200

Very well said.

They could theoretically compete with Apple on both price and product, but to me this clearly looks like a defensive move by RIM.

Gotcha.

This is so obvious as to make me wonder about people that deny it.

This is why I have a feeling that iPad will get rev'ed real soon possibly with the iPod refresh. Why you might ask, well for a couple of reasons. One is that more RAM is really needed in the iPad and iPhone clearly indicates that it is possible to beef up memory to better support 4.x. Second Facetime is likely to be supported in many Apple devices by the end of the year and such supportvin iPad would be welcomed by many.

The key here is FaceTime and how strongly it is accepted in the market place. I could see the competition having huge problems if FaceTime takes off.

In any event RIMs success or failure here means nothing. More important is the realization that Apple will have lots of competition in the near future. It is not impossible for one of those competitors to hit the right combo of features to be successful. After all it is a question of software, iPad actually has rather simple hardware.


Dave

I think anyone planning on a tablet now is doing the right thing. Apple created this tablet market with a rich but highly optimized OS and UI from scratch so there is plenty of opportunities for others to jump in, especially those who have experience with leading HW and SW development for a mobile device the wy RiM does. I can easily see RiM being the 2nd most profitable tablet maker.

Good question. I obviously don't know, but if I were to speculate, it would have a virtual keyboard, but you never know. If the tablet had a physical keyboard, I would expect it to be full sized (landscape) with real keys, but to do it right would raise of the cost of producing the hardware and add weight & complexity. Apple showed that a multitouch virtual keyboard can in fact work very well.

It is truly amazing then that such a sad, pathetic, horrible company such as RIM (by your analysis), manages to sell so many phones. If I recall, they outsold Apple last year. Yes, I am aware that it is one phone against many, but according to your view RIM is a company has a limited selection of shoddy inferior crappy products, and should not be selling many phones at all.

Whether this product is successful is anybody's guess, and they have a steep uphill climb, but assert that RIM makes crappy phones is absurd.

Blackpad = A+ for the name, made me chuckle. We'll see how it will stack up in hardware/software though.

Here come the sheep following the leader once again! RIM with its BaaaPad, Microsoft with its BaaaSlate, HP with its BaaaPalm, and Google with its whole flock of BaaaDroids.

All will fail because they haven't yet worked out how to copy Apple's product development strategy involving integrated hardware, operating system and application development and delivery.

They simply deserve to fail because they don't want to do all that essential R&D work that Apple has done over the past decade. They just want to do product development on the cheap and tap into the increasingly desperate and irrelevant anti-Apple market.

WELL. I dont have an ipad because I am waiting for a good windows pad front beck camera with usb support BUT Rim himmm. I had an blackberry storm I will never ever buy any blackberry product again because I have never seen so clumsy operating system before.

Are you kidding. No executive will rock an iPhone or android. Blackberry is as standard as the suit and tie and I doubt that will change. All RIM has to do is make sure it stays somewhat current (which it will with Blackberry 6) and just like MS they will have a long and healthy life in the enterprise. I doubt RIM really cares much for the consumer market.

Addition: Well maybe some executives now that I think of it, but most business owners I've met had blackberries because they are blackberries and that's what business people use.

I've never owned a RIM product, so perhaps I am underrating their chances, but I really don't see what they are bringing to the table with this product that Apple has not done already. They apparently are not even trying to do anything original. A "me too" product isn't going to cut it at this point, IMO. It virtually concedes that Apple has already done it right and they're just trying to play catchup.

My wife loves her BB 9700, and to be honest, as a phone it is better than my 3G.

RIM did not get to where they are by being some sort of cheap unskilled, unimagianitive maker of crap, as some on this board would have you believe. OTOH, they do have an uphill battle in this market.

1) Using unit sales doesn't help you help your point and reinforces anantksundaram's.

2) RiM's ability to increase profits YoY despite the iPhone steadily creeping into its territory while others have fallen consoliderably is a testament to how well RiM is managed and would be a great counter-argument to RiM being "such a sad, pathetic, horrible company", but I can't see where he stated or even implied that. All he seems to have stated was RiM's need to make their own path, which implies a lack of creativity and/or risk taking, to which I agree.

He stated that RIM is a company trapped by inferior quality, hence my statement regarding sad . .

YoY profits are not relevant to the point he was making. He stated that RIM makes a limited number (lack of product differentiation) crappy (inferior quality) products.

If that was really true, then they should not be selling many phones, no matter what the profit margin on a phone is or what their YoY profits are.

There is nothing with "me, too" products. In business you can 'lead, follow or get out of the way' with the latter being death of your product and/ company because you didnt do either of the first two things.

Take Android OS and all these touch-based phones copying Apple's lead in a market they reinvented just 3 years ago. Cell phone vendors that were losing money each quarter are now back in the black from slim up their product line and focusing on the next "iPhone killer".

The fact is, you can't be a leader unless you have followers and they follow because they benefit from your leadership.

Tabula Onyx?

Gee, original name.

It tends to be quite the opposite in most cases.

1. McDonalds meal v. Ruth Chris' Steakhouse
2. Mac OS X v. Windows
3. MacBook Pros v. $400 Notebooks
4. Something cheap v. Something expensive in the category

The list is virtually endless. If it's cheaper it opens it up to more potential customers, but it also has to be more cheaply produced to make it viable for your market. Some things you work around to save costs without jeopardizing quality but typically it's done by cutting many corners, thus making a comparatively inferior product. RiM has done well to cut costs while maximizing profits (they're a great company), but I wouldn't call any RiM phone equal to or "ferior" to the iPhone.

Let's hope MIke and Jim will return to the marketing company that came up with the iconic name Blackberry. To call a me-too product by a me-too name is to me too much.

IMO, your list is not valid, because you are not comparing equivalent products as you raised in your last point (in the same category). you have drawn categories so vaguely (e.g., food) that they are relatively meaningless.

The appropriate list would be (we will leave out the OSX vs MS comparison).

Ruths Chris vs. Mortons
McDonalds vs Burger King
MacBook Pro vs HP Envy

if RC made a horrible steak they would be out of business or doing much less worse than Mortons (or visa versa).

I'm assuming the Blackpad is fully compatible with Blackberries. All the backend is already up and running and any business apps they have for existing Blackberries should just work. I must say I have never used a product by RiM so I don't know just what the investment a company would be throwing away to switch to Apple. I assume transitioning from RiM to Apple would incur some costs. There are also plenty of Blackberry users I know who will not give up a physical keyboard.

I do like my iPad, but many of the advantages are really for the home user. I doubt corporate IT departments care there is a quarter million apps in the App Store as most of them are non-business or want to send large numbers of employees to an Apple store to familiarize themselves with Apple products. It makes me wonder about iPhones in business. How much of it is IT departments opening up their Exchange servers so people can use their own personal iPhones and how much is full adoption where the iPhones are provided by company and run custom business apps? Do companies really install iTunes on their desktops?

Overall, I cannot see RiM even making a small dent in the consumer market; however, they are very strong in the corporate world so I wouldn't write them off just yet.

Perhaps, perhaps not. By November the number of folks that couldn't stand waiting any longer could end up being very small.

Look at businesses. Airlines renting ipads for in flight entertainment. Restaurants using ipads for menus and ordering systems. Stanford putting ipads in the hands of all med school students, various smaller colleges making ipads an option for 'free tech' for incoming students. There was even an article here on AI about a week ago about the last earnings report and statements that 50% of the Fortune 100 were using or testing ipads. Etextbooks and podcasted lectures are the new hip thing and students will need whatever by Sept. Weeks before this 'blackpad' will be an option.

Only the "I will not buy it no matter what because it's f'ing" Apple folks could be all that is left. And that's such a small group compared to the other side that the war may be lost before the battle starts.

Blackpad is sorta cool I think. Sorta sounds like a Stealth jet version.

Anyway I welcome the competition. Keep Apple honest.

I could overheat though. They cancelled one of the RIM debuts here a couple years back because the new BBs overheated.

Stop hyperventilating, and attributing things to me that I did not say.

You understand neither 'product differentiation' nor 'quality' as it relates to margins. Moreover, you appear to have missed the context. Both the story and the comment are solely about new product introductions.

Since you brought it up, I should tell you that Apple's profit margin is about 21%, compared to RIM's ~18%. Considering that Apple's profits are confounded with the (extremely competitive) computer segment, it masks the even higher margins on the iPhones relative to Blackberrys. If truly related businesses were compared, RIM will probably fare much worse on margins. And the lower margins are very likely associated with both a relative lack of differentiation and relatively lower quality.

Add: The main point of my original comment, which you appear to have completely missed, is how Apple's profit margins have become a de facto entry barrier for companies introducing new products in segments in which Apple already competes.

the berry pad doesn't have a chance in hell to match the ipad's specs, unless rim is selling it at 1% profit, which the way everyone in the tec industry is panicked out of their minds with the ipad, that could well be the case. Now how many apps this thing is going to run is anyone's guess...

What OS will it run?

I really can't see this succeeding in the consumer market unless:
1) They have a superior product to Apple, not just in terms of features, but also in "wow factor". This is the main problem for competitors to both the iPhone and the iPod before it.
2) They price it lower and go for the cheaper, but almost as good concept. But even this tactic isn't guaranteed to work - just look at the other smart phones out there.

It could succeed in the business market, but again there are problems here too. Not least of which is the fragile global economy, and in such circumstances not many are going to invest heavily in IT, especially for things like a tablet, when they could make do with cheaper alternatives.

Yeah, besides the price, and RIM not having made hardware+software devices bigger than smartphones, this was the other main thing I was thinking of. So the WiFi BlackPad is the same price as the iPad, and there's no 3G version you have to tether it when you're out and about.

Hmmm Blackfail?

Nonetheless I welcome more competitors to the space. It's only been, uh, almost 8 months since Apple fully announced and then shipped the iPad.

You all do realise that Blackberry, HP and Microsoft are only in the past month coming out with tablet plans; because Apple's earning report was a real blowout and the iPad is clearly more successful than even Apple thought.

Great business strategy, RIM, HP and MS!

"Yeah, uh... let's all announce some great vapourware at CES 2010..."
Apple comes out with iPad
"Uh... nah, who'll want that..."
Apple appears to do well with iPad
"Hmmm let's see where this goes"
Apple announces blowout calendar Q2 2010 results, iPads continually sold out
"O.M.F.G. QUICK! to the insta-announce-some-productocrap-mobile!"

I don't want nobody grasping mah berries...!

Nightshade OS

Seriously, that would be a cool name.

Good point. Even making a touchscreen smartphone put them far out of their element. I hear the the next Storm will have a capacitance touchscreen. I hope so, for their sake.



If RiM gives up on this idea and says publicly, in any way, that they didnt want to make a tablet anyway then I vote that they phrase sour grapes be changed to sour berries.

Shhh! The adults are are having a conversation.

I agree. RIM is a good competitor, and a RIM-branded tablet that can carve out a niche in business further legitimizes tablet computing, something that Microsoft has been crowing about for over a decade, but hasn't been able to sell.

Stop ragging on RIM. They were the revolutionary product once upon a time. And they have cred with IT departments and with commercial and industrial users. I could see my hospital adopting a RIM pad before they'd ever go Apple.

I'm not so sure. On the surface, RIM's strong position in business might be attractive. One might picture that Apple would dominate the consumer side and RIM the business side. On further reflection, though, I think this breaks down.

The average Blackberry user is a corporate drone using what's forced on them by IT. IT, by its nature, is going to go for business-focused devices with plenty of power. They're not going to be swayed by form factor, ease of use, flexibility, or the plethora of non-business apps that a tablet makes possible. In essence, the biggest response I can see from Blackberry IT groups is "if you need a notebook, get a Windows notebook. If you need a phone, get a Blackberry). I'm just not sure they're capable of seeing the value of a mini-tablet comparable to the iPad. In fact, they were among the loudest nay-sayers. So, the group which has the potential to make the BlackPad successful is likely to be neutral - at best - or negative. If RIM is going to be even moderately successful with this product, they have to seriously change their white shirt and pocket protector image.

I think Apple's success with the iPad (and iPod and iPhone before that) was based on creating a high level of consumer pull and excitement among users. The entire "you can use this for games and watching movies as well as business presentations" goes against the entire RIM modus operandi. Because of that, I think the ultimate #2 in that market will be a consumer products company - or, at least, someone with more experience with consumers than RIM. if HP integrates PalmOS properly, I could see HP as a strong #2. Or maybe Sony - if they ever get their act together. Maybe even Dell going after the 'cheap' side of the market.

Only time will tell, though.

I think that's an interesting guess - because hospitals are already moving forward with iPads pretty quickly. Just yesterday, for example:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...ples_ipad.html


It comes down to independence vs. control. The entire Blackberry success story was one of getting in with IT departments and having their product declared a standard to make the IT managers' jobs easier. Unless they can duplicate that with the BlackPad, they don't have a chance. And given how loudly IT managers spoke out against the entire concept of the iPad, I just don't see it happening.

As far as differentiating their product goes, RIM have possibilities to offer a more productive combination of a Blackberry+Blackpad than the iPhone+iPad. Tethering the Blackpad to Blackberries will relieve users from an unnecessary duplication of the 3G radio, while the thumb keys of the Blackberry could be used as an additional input method for their tablet, for example.

If they stayed focused, this Blackpad could have some limited success. I am not holding my breath though.