The news just never seems to be good for RIM. Thursday, the Canadian company announced it sold just 200,000 PlayBook tablets during the last quarter. Today, an analyst predicts the iPhone 5 will “steamroll” RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 7 smartphones.
Just as RIM starts promoting its new line of handsets powered by the BlackBerry 7 operating system, Apple is expected to steal the spotlight with the introduction of its iPhone 5, pushing the already heightened interest in the device “off the charts,” writes Ticonderoga Securities’ analyst Brian White. The fifth-generation iPhone is expected to be unveiled within weeks, sometime in October, according to multiple reports.
Thursday, RIM reported selling 10.6 million BlackBerry handsets during the previous quarter, company profits falling 47 percent compared to the previous year. White joined other experts predicting RIM’s PlayBook tablet could go the way of HP’s TouchPad, discounted and then withdrawn.
RIM’s PlayBook may be the “next casualty of iPad’s tablet dominance,” White writes. Thursday, RIM executives announced retailers have unsold PlayBooks sitting on shelves and discounts and rebates are likely to appear in order to move the units.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
13 responses to “Apple’s iPhone 5 to ‘Steamroll’ BlackBerry 7 Handsets”
Every time I find myself feeling sorry for all the dudes at RIM I keep remembering that they’re in the mess because of the decisions the made. So sad.
cult of mac, you might want to check…..
sold? or shipped? 200 000 playbook tablets
francois
Well obviously because Rim isn’t even in the same league as Apple
The most difficult thing for these other companies to compete with is not the new Apple products, but the paradigm shift Apple creates with these new products. You can never get ahead by playing “catch up” and imitating what others do. You can only win through innovation, and this seems to be what is built into Apple’s DNA. RIM (and the others) need to look beyond Apple and hopefully come up with their own innovations…
I give RIM a year, maybe 20 months at the most! Can’t say I’ll miss them. They had a lot of “smart” things to say when the iPhone came out (then they copied it: Bold 9000/Storm 1&2/Torch 9800 & 9810) & then the iPad too (then they copied it: PlayBook = “BIG-TIME” FAIL!!). Then they said apps don’t “make sense”. Then they came out with “App World” (with very few useful apps). Then they hooked up with Adobe, just to spite Apple, who had already dismissed their technology as “outdated”. RIM didn’t even have a flash plug-in that functioned on their own browsers, but decided to go ahead & co-sign Adobe’s framework tools (Adobe AIR) as the future of “app” development. On top of that, they decided to ignore their prior statement & make a deal with Google/Android to develop an emulation tool, to port Android apps over to QNX devices. It’s been almost a year since they announced this & it hasn’t materialized. It’s NO surprise that they’re failing at every attempt to get into “new” mobile market. They only “react”, then “copy” so consistently, that they’ve failed to notice all of they’re piling failures. Now they’re so deep in their holes, they can’t even get out of the “delusion” they’ve created for themselves! Sad.
I cant believe they even sold 200,000 Playbooks why would anyone buy one. its the same price as an iPad, smaller screen, lesser battery life, no apps, blackberry branded so its not even got the cool factor that apple has
How about this title:
Apple’s iPhone 5 to ‘Steamroll’ All Handsets