iPhone, Mission Impossible: a 2007 RIM Movie?

Tuesday, December 28, 2010 | Mbah Wo
di 6:47 AM |

Over the week-end, there was a small drama unfolding as an alleged former employee talked about RIM’s reaction to Apple’s original iPhone announcement. The comment immediately spread like wildfire on the web, but basically, RIM (the company behind Blackberry products) could simply not believe that the idea of iPhone was even technically possible. They questioned the battery life (well, that was a good point) and the raw horse power needed to process all the data at the speed at which the iPhone was demonstrated on stage. Blackberry devices being among the slowest in today’s smartphone market, we can imagine why they would be surprised. To be fair, other brands were also said to be as shocked and skeptical about the whole iPhone thing. It seems surprising that RIM (and others) did not see it coming, but what happened can be described with 3 simple ideas:

It can’t be done

Firmly believing that something can’t be done is a sure way to not do it. According to this mysterious employee, RIM allegedly did not believe that the iPhone, as it was demonstrated, was simply a pipe dream and that Apple was “lying” to the world. Guess what: it looks like the concept is alive and kicking after all.

Our position can’t be taken

Later on, when it became evident that the phone was indeed working as demonstrated on stage, RIM probably thought that it would be somewhat  insulated from the fallout because iPhone is a consumer device and Blackberry is/was more of an enterprise solution. It turns out that RIM does need the consumers (us!) for growth and that people would eventually be tired of carrying two phones and sometime paying double-subscription, especially in times of financial hardship. Finally, “security”, the last ring protecting RIM isn’t something that the overwhelming majority of consumers care about. We all know that the trend is that the line between “consumer” and “business” applications is getting blurry very fast.

The competition will falter along the way

Since 2007, iPhone have multiplied quite rapidly

We don’t know if this is something that RIM was thinking, but many companies do: when they don’t think that a concept will work, they assume that sometime down the road, the competition will bump into an unsolvable problem, or simply “screw up”. It might or might not happen, but hoping that the competitor will slip is definitely not a strategy. Releasing a touch phone like the Storm isn’t one either.

The Blackberry PlayBook is nice, but still off limits for a good first impression

But it seems that RIM has learned its lesson, at least partially. At the most recent Blackberry events, the company was pushing for “performance”, something that their phones is in dire need of. Even the Blackberry Torch -the best BB right now- isn’t competitive enough. The Blackberry PlayBook, the company’s first tablet might be the first product that offers “leading” performance in a long while, and even that is not guaranteed. Given how Blackberry hides it from anyone who could criticize it, we can safely assume that there is still quite a lot of work to be done. But from the controlled PlayBook demos, it seems that the hardware is capable.

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