RIM (RIMM) Tries To Keep A Market It Is Losing (AAPL)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Research In Motion (RIMM) has come out with a new version of its Blackberry called Bold. It incorporates many of the multimedia functions of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. To trump the Steve Jobs product, it operates on 3G networks accessing faster wireless broadband. This will be a selling benefit in the US and in places like Europe where 3G is widely deployed.

Apple will not be far behind RIM in the 3G department. Its new iPhone will have the capability of working on these speedy airwaves. The most significant new features of the RIM Bold are its easier web access and its ability to download music and video. These are just the things that the prototypical Blackberry user does not want. It may increase the price of the product, but e-mail is at the core of the device’s appeal and piling on features which are of use to people in their twenties does not bring much to the table.

RIM will be assaulted by the new Apple 3G iPhone. It already has multimedia capacity and will add 3G. E-mail will work better on the faster network so the iPhone’s appeal to the general business user should go up.

The Blackberry is for e-mail. Making it more feature rich is a way to make it harder to use. For RIMM, that is a big mistake.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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