Analyst Opinion - We often talk about an iPhone killer, which clearly has not arrived yet. To date, the only company that has really put a crimp in iPhone sales is RIM, which posted strong growth during the first year the iPhone was available. RIM enjoys a very loyal following of users that, while they are not as vocal as their Apple counterparts, they very likely to buy another Blackberry - no matter how compelling other devices may be. And RIM appeals to the folks who buy most smart phones - business buyers - while the iPhone is still largely seen as an expensive consumer device.
RIM was always better at business and really didn’t get the whole entertainment thing. And, you have to admit, an initially crappy MobileMe made a joke out of Steve Jobs suggesting that Active Sync was a bad technology. Active Sync actually worked and RIM’s service is much more mature and trusted by enterprise buyers than Active Sync currently is.
Enter Slacker, which has an incredible service (my personal favorite at the moment) - one of the best ways to enjoy new tunes using a portable device. The only problem is the Slacker device kind of looks and works like something designed by Harley Davidson during their bad years. It does not look and feel like something a real CE vendor would bring to market, which means it is well out of Apple’s league right now.
But, combine the RIM hardware, particularly the new RIM Bold and Thunder with the Slacker Service and you have something interesting and exciting.
Building a better iPhone
There have been a number of really interesting competing products that have come to market over the last few months. The best until recently were the LG Dare and the Samsung Instinct. While I don’t know anyone who uses the Dare, I have spoken to several who have the Instinct and they love it but neither has the blend of services and hardware to translate into a true knockout blow. Both have advantages over the iPhone, but all three devices have really poor battery life (at least Samsung gives you a spare battery).
Recently Sprint and HTC launched the new Sprint HTC Touch Diamond, soon to be followed by the Touch Pro. Coupled with Sprint’s back end and bigger batteries, these devices actually have a number of advantages over the iPhone from smaller size and longer battery life to a better GPS and an Opera based browser. But the Sprint music service isn’t iTunes and the end-to-end experience, while arguably one of the best in the non-iPhone class, still is just competitive. It doesn’t really exceed the iPhone and does not really make up for the music a lot of folks have already invested in on iTunes. Now if they added the Zune music service… But they don’t and while they are overall the iPhone’s match they don’t beat the iPhone in enough areas to be truly better, just different.
The RIM Bold and Thunder coupled with Slacker have the possibility of beating the iPhone on almost all fronts, granted they won’t have Apple marketing or Steve Jobs, both of which have been critical to Apple’s success. But RIM has focused developers, it is vastly more focused on business applications (companies still buy the vast majority of phones in this class), and their end-to-end experience when coupled with a RIM server makes MobileMe look like a bad joke.
What really puts it over the top though is Slacker.
The Slacker difference
I’ve been using Slacker for some time and have become really hooked on this service. It learns your likes and dislikes based on the artists you select and builds custom channels for you of constantly refreshed music, either free with advertising (Google model) or at a nominal fee per month without. This is, to me, actually better than most subscription services, because I never have to manage my tracks or manually select or deselect songs I’m tired of on the service. Like TiVo, you vote on the songs you like and dislike and, over time, the service learns of your interests and updates your music based on how well it knows you.
After a few weeks with the service, I rarely get a track I don’t like and still the majority of tracks are constantly new and fresh with a few of my favorite songs constantly tossed in for good measure. Granted there is no real video yet, but video on any of these phones decreases battery life dramatically leaving you, with no juice for doing anything else anyway. But, RIM will eventually have to close this final gap and undoubtedly will do so with the services typically offered by the carriers that have it. TV on Verizon and Sprint has generally been better than the iPhone experience and I would expect they will show up on the Bold and Thunder as well.
Wrapping up
RIM has history of solving first quality and battery life. They have had service issues, but their phones have been rock solid and those service issues are now in RIM’s past while the Apple service issues (coupled with the related law suits) are still in our present.
With the right marketing, I think RIM could steal Apple’s thunder (pun intended) and provide a real alternative to the iPhone now that it has a music offering that is both different and arguably better for those that don’t like to manage music on their phone (and given the refresh rate for iPods I’m guessing there are a lot of you out there).
The RIM Bold with Slacker will be worth watching and it may, for many of us, be one of the best iPhone alternatives, along with the HTC Touch Diamond and Pro out there this year. Life is about choices, RIM and Slacker just made the smart phone market really interesting. I don’t expect iPhone fans to switch, but in the quest for new customers, this new RIM partnership is a winner. We’ll see if it plays out that way.
From : http://www.tgdaily.com/
