Look, I’ll just cut to the chase, because sites like Boy Genius Report, Engadget and Gizmodo have all the details covered in gory detail.
Bottom line: the BlackBerry Storm isn’t all that great. And this is coming from someone who had a bunch of BlackBerries, moved to the iPhone, and then (gasp!) went back to BlackBerry.
At this point, Apple should send a nice basket of wine and chocolate to RIM with a pleasant, holiday-themed thank you card.
Why?
Even IF the Storm’s OS wasn’t unpolished, and even IF the UI metaphors are completely new to most BlackBerry users, and even IF a lack of a real keyboard won’t eventually come to be known as a deterrent to BlackBerry users expecting a BlackBerry experience, the real problem is that the phone is just a device, not a platform. Regardless of RIM’s SDK efforts, this is the only touchscreen BlackBerry on the planet, and here in the States it’s only available on Verizon. And there’s no real buzz about a robust SDK, and there’s no gathering swell of users dying to write apps for a phone that, thus far, has been completely lukewarm.
Contrast that to the iPhone. Yes, it’s only available on one US carrier, but the SDK has been here for quite some time, and it’s real and polished and usable. The app market for the iPhone is quite real, as any decent iPhone developer could have told you after the first month or two of enjoying brisk downloads and word-of-mouth interest. And the keystone of it all is that Apple is behind it: they have the marketing savvy and development resources to truly build buzz and erect an entire ecosystem around the iPhone to draw people into the fold.
Because the iPhone is a mobile computing platform, not a phone. Amazing how many people don’t yet understand that this is Apple’s coup de grace.
The BlackBerry Storm, in my opinion, is a wonderful illustration of how Apple’s innovation and market appeal can force a smart company like RIM to invest millions of dollars in a product that’s way outside its core competency. You don’t see Apple trying to create a full-on enterprise/e-mail device, do you?
You don’t, and you won’t. Apple will just continue to gather mindshare as dozens of imitators try to absorb their share of the touchscreen multimedia pie.
So what exactly did RIM just do with the Storm?
Validated the hell out of Apple’s innovation, technology and — because RIM fell short with the Storm — position in the market. Like every other company that released its ‘iPhone killer’ only to see it heavily discounted after six months of slow sales.
I’m a BlackBerry guy, and I wanted to move to the Storm and love it like a brother. Unfortunately, even I wasn’t prepared for how unfinished (read: rushed) it is.
I have a feeling Verizon will be getting boatloads of returns on the thing.
Related:
27 responses so far ↓
Phil Nelson // December 4, 2008 at 7:12 pm |
Great point re: the KIND of device it is. I don’t think RIM even gets that, internally, which is a shame.
Dave // December 4, 2008 at 7:23 pm |
“The BlackBerry Storm, in my opinion, is a wonderful illustration of how Apple’s innovation and market appeal can force a smart company like RIM to invest millions of dollars in a product that’s way outside its core competency.”
Nicely describes what happened to Dell too.
Patrick // December 4, 2008 at 7:34 pm |
“Because the iPhone is a mobile computing platform, not a phone. Amazing how many people don’t yet understand that this is Apple’s coup de grace.”
Jeff, nicely put.
The same statement could be said about people that think a new music player will be an iPod-killer simply because it has more disk space or extra features. The iPod is such a success because it’s part of an integrated ecosystem that includes iTunes and the iTunes Store. Any manufacturer that wants to beat the iPod has to trump the combined iPod-iTunes-iTunes Store combo. Like the iPhone, the iPod is a music platform, not just a music player.
Kurazaybo // December 4, 2008 at 7:41 pm |
Congrats, Jeff. You are on daring fireball.
Dan Katz // December 4, 2008 at 8:24 pm |
The wine poured through my basket. Though it held the chocolates okay.
Hans // December 4, 2008 at 8:56 pm |
Maybe if Apple had named it the iMobileComputingPlatform it wouldn’t be as hard for phone manufacturers to understand.
jhn // December 4, 2008 at 8:57 pm |
“You don’t see Apple trying to create a full-on enterprise/e-mail device, do you?”
Apple has been making gestures towards that, I think. With Exchange support, etc.
But I agree that the consumer market, and young people who are tomorrow’s tech buyers, are who Apple is going after.
Fred // December 4, 2008 at 9:02 pm |
i haven’t used either, but was just wanting to clarify a detail, you wrote:
“You don’t see Apple trying to create a full-on enterprise/e-mail device, do you?”
but isn’t the iphone a full-on enterprise/email device? admittedly, actually doing isn’t ‘trying’, but it’s something that didn’t start out that way, and it’s not the core view of what the iphone should be (in apples opinion) but they’ll put it in there because it’ll sell the iphone.
Kontra // December 4, 2008 at 9:23 pm |
About 10 months ago I outlined 10 crucial factors it would take for any company to compete against the iPhone whose 3G version wasn’t even out yet:
Who can beat iPhone 2.0?
http://counternotions.com/2008/03/10/iphone2-competitors/
One by one, we’ll see iPhone-killers turn into roadkill, with each divvying up the non-iPhone market and thereby reinforcing Apple’s leadership position.
CJ Guest // December 4, 2008 at 9:44 pm |
As a Blackberry user for the past 5 years I, unlike most, was looking forward to have a touchscreen option, because it provides more display area. I can’t believe how much of a disappointment the Storm was! With the slow OS and the lack of a comparable app store, I will be switching, next week, to the iPhone when my contract is up.
Lun Esex // December 4, 2008 at 11:31 pm |
People forget that the iPod-iTunes-iTunes Store platform didn’t spring fully formed from Infinite Loop in Cupertino, also.
iTunes came first, followed about a year later by the iPod, followed about a year later by the iTunes Music Store. Until then, there was no DRMed music or AAC support in iPods at all! Apple tested the downloadable video waters with free music videos well before they added TV shows, and much later movies. Then iPod contact (Address Book) and calendar (iCal) integration through iTunes, plus photo integration though iPhoto were natural predecessors to the iPhone.
Palm CEO Ed Colligan sceptically said of Apple and the iPhone “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
And that’s true: Apple *didn’t* “just walk in.” But they also weren’t just “PC guys.” They spent years laying the iTunes-iPod-iTunes Store foundations in order to lead up to the iPhone.
Even then, look at the iPhone’s evolution from the basic 1.0 OS to 1.1 with the WiFi Store, 1.1.3 with pseudo-GPS, bookmarks as icons, icon rearrangement, and multiple home screens, 2.0 with the App Store and everything else it brought, 2.1 with Genius playlists, iPod enhancements, and bug fixes, and now 2.2 with the Maps enhancements, podcast downloads, etc.
Along the way Apple made the “phone-less iPhone,” the iPod Touch, and continued updating iTunes andtheir other iPods.
The irony is that OTHER COMPANIES now think that THEY can “just walk in” with a touch screen phone of their own and be successful–just as other companies thought they could build a better iPod by adding things like an FM radio and WiFi “squirting” (hello, Zune), while neglecting the iTunes ecosystem that took years to build and gain success.
RIM’s now given it their shot, and clearly they’re going to find it’s not so easy to “just walk in” and build a robust mobile computing platform and ecosystem that owes as much to desktop computer OSes and software as it does to mobile phones and the two-way pager style messaging where RIM saw its intial success.
seanwolter // December 5, 2008 at 12:20 am |
aha A link from df.net!
Digiprod // December 5, 2008 at 12:31 am |
Bang Zoom you hit this one out of the park and to the moon. I am amazed when I read the Crackberry nuts attacks against their own who are having problems with the Storm and have returned them!
It does not take long for the smarter buyers to realize the Storm is not only buggy and lacks WiFi, but they soon notice the GPS chip is locked and there are hardly any apps!
fifthdecade // December 5, 2008 at 12:32 am |
As bad as the iPhone is, I’ll be sticking with it because it’s just so darn’ usable! To be fair, most of the ‘bad’ is MobileMe, not the iPhone itself.
KiltBear // December 5, 2008 at 9:10 am |
Could someone explain how the iPhone is not full on enterprise email capable. I use both Exchange/ActiveSync support combined with MobileMe support and I have one device that gives me full access to work and home PIM data but leaves them fully segragated. You can’t do that with another device.
Jeff Ventura // December 5, 2008 at 10:13 am |
KiltBear: It’s enterprise email capable, but it’s not a full enterprise groupware device. Tasks, for instance. The iPhone is oblivious to simple Outlook tasks, which is a fairly huge oversight to corporate warriors. It was a huge problem for me, as I live and die by my calendar and tasklist, and I don’t have Exchange. What, then, for me? (BlackBerry still offers its BIS.)
Then there’s the lack of a physical keyboard and the general single-mindededness of the iPhone, which is fine for some. But corporate types, who use their BlackBerries as a literal business hub, need multitasking, true push email from various accounts (not just Exchange (and MobileMe)), and the ability to switch quickly between dataviews: from mail, to tasks, to address book, back to messages, to calendar. The iPhone, as awesome as it is, doesn’t handle this anywhere near as well.
Now, as an all-around platform and speaking in terms of future promise, the iPhone has it in spades. It will be a very, very interesting day when the iPhone overtakes RIM’s marketshare, which, after seeing Windows Mobile fall to the iPhone and hearing rumors of a low-cost iPhone to be sold through Wal-Mart, I’m convinced will happen.
The Blackberry Storm (add weather pun here) | Journal | FoxLand // December 5, 2008 at 10:17 am |
[...] 3: Jeff Ventura’s article about the issue includes this great quote: The BlackBerry Storm, in my opinion, is a wonderful illustration of how [...]
'Deep // December 5, 2008 at 3:19 pm |
Thanks for the interesting read – I’m curious – do you have a post about why you switched back to BlackBerry? I tried to find one but couldn’t. I’m really curious.
Thanks
David Nitzsche-Bell // December 5, 2008 at 3:29 pm |
[...]RIM’s now given it their shot[...]
Would this be the new definition of a rim-shot?
Jeff Ventura // December 5, 2008 at 3:39 pm |
‘Deep: TONS of email asking me the same thing. Post coming soon.
GQB // December 5, 2008 at 5:41 pm |
@Jeff Ventura…
Lately I’ve been seeing “young’uns” doing 2-thumb typing on the iPhone that blows me away.
I think this is yet another case of letting the past get in the way of the future.
As for ‘enterprise capability’, I’d have to put Outlook Task compatibility at the bottom of the “needed” list, simply because Outlook’s Task implementation is itself the worse such I’ve ever seen. It really is horrible. In our 7000+ person shop, very few use it.
The only think keeping most of us at this company from jumping bigtime is AT&T hassles on allowing use of pooled minutes.
Phoenix Woman // December 5, 2008 at 9:56 pm |
The closest thing I’ve seen to iPhone killers were the Samsung Omnia and Behold, which came out this summer and fall, respectively. But any chance they had of wooing iPhone users was torched when the 3G came out at half the cost of the Omnia and about $100 less than the Behold.
And yes, the whole point of the iPhone — which the existence of the iPod Touch emphasizes — is that it’s a mobile computing system. All it needs now is cut/copy/paste and a number of road-warrior folks, in this age of the $50-per-bag fee, will ditch their laptops for it.
From BlackBerry, to iPhone, then back to BlackBerry. Why? « GracefulFlavor // December 6, 2008 at 10:56 am |
[...] 6, 2008 · No Comments Ever since writing my piece on why the BlackBerry Storm is a fairly lousy smartphone — perhaps, in fact, a massive mistake — I’ve been deluged by email asking why I [...]
buddyvalero.com » A Storm from BlackBerry // December 6, 2008 at 2:37 pm |
[...] Jeff Ventura on the BlackBerry Storm: [...]
Anonymous // December 7, 2008 at 10:42 am |
Gmail and google calendar work fine on the iPhone. In fact, a better calender app that syncs with Google’s is ‘Saisuke’, which has a free version, but only syncs the current week. The $9.99 version can be set to sync a specific range of dates. Also, if you Jailbreak the iPhone, there is a free tethering app called PDAnet, although I’ve never tried it. Exchange works great for me, but I like Saisuke’s calender showing me a monthly view with text. Fortunately, 3G is around here to a good extent.
Bill // December 7, 2008 at 2:06 pm |
BTW, I found a pretty darn good Apple savvy tech blog with some real good info. Thought I’d share.
http://terrywhite.com/techblog/
От Apple к Blackberry с любовью | alexmak.net // December 15, 2008 at 2:30 am |
[...] Оригинал [...]