Originally Posted by
lorax1284 RIM's OS deployment model is different than that of Apple: incremental improvement, not big releases / announcements. I think the comparison of how QNX will improve over the short term should take that into consideration.
Another significant factor that is often left out of these discussions: RIM's business model is growth by increasing the size of the pie, not by getting a bigger piece of an existing set-sized pie. RIM's investor outlook IS relative to other players for whom market share growth is their key data point... which is fair, because when you are an investor are you going to choose to invest in a company who is going to grow, but not grow as fast as another company?
To a certain extent, there is some corporate psychology going on here: Apple wants to be number #1, and has the resources to do it. RIM is happy to be number... um... umpteen, and has the resources to do it, so long as there is growth. I don't mean to say that RIM is happy to settle with inferior quality products: I think their products are great quality, software and hardware alike... I just mean they're not trying to "own" the mass market. They're sticking with their niche... a niche they arguably created, but are arguably becoming even niche-y-er.
I think RIM's problem, a dangerous one, is that statements made by the co-CEOs imply that they are happy to be "correct" and "realistic", like making statements that "The Web is not an app" (which is true... how many iOS apps are just repackaged lame Websites? Or even worse, LIVE "apps" that connect to the net and could JUST be well-written iOS-targetted web pages?) and releasing hardware that is "powerful enough" when what people want is ridiculously over powered devices that cost 1/3rd more but don't really provide much value for that investment? Well, market forces have a "dark side" and RIM doesn't always want to play that game, to the detriment of their public reputation. So, instead of 300,000 shovelware apps in App World, they are 'satisfied' with a few thousand apps, with a higher percentage of quality not-repackaged-web-pages-and-soundboard apps. To that end Let's hope the new all-touch-screen "Blackberry Touch" will be very high resolution and very high performance, to **** with how much it costs.
In a market affected by prevailing "trends", like which devices / OS platform will rule the roost a year from now, RIM's "trending" downward, while other OS platforms are trending upward. (Personally, I think iOS has peaked in terms of market share and will only decline from here on out. There can be no iOS revolution... unless Apple releases a whole NEW mobile platform OS that IS revolutionary in the same way that iOS was revolutionary when compared to Symbian and BB and Windows CE and Palm... and Android devices are too uneven and the proprietary UI layers (Dell Stage, HTC Sense, Moto Blur) make the apps the only common denominator... would you choose an HTC "Sense" device over a Dell "Stage" device, because you're used to how the launcher works? I think lots of people will.
That said, I don't believe that QNX is inferior to iOS in any way. There are lots of discussions on this and other boards about the merits of QNX / BBOS and iOS.
For someone like me, for whom these devices are communication tools, and fart apps have substantially lost their appeal (such as it was) all I can say is that I can live without my iOS devices, but could make do with an iOS device in a pinch, but choose my RIM devices over them, because they have the right balance of hardware features and communications aplomb, and a handful of mild flatulence apps to amuse me during those strange moments when I have absolutely, positively, nothing better to do.