RIM (RIMM) Ignores Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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When Apple (AAPL) came out with its new 3G iPhone today, shares in Steve Jobs’ company fell. Shares at rival smartphone company Research-In-Motion (RIMM) rose.

The new iPhone has a number of features, including more advanced e-mail functions, which would make it a threat to RIMM, but that market did not see that, at least at first blush.

Part of that may be the iPhone’s pricing. While the initial reaction to a much lower price point for the new handset was that it will drive unit sales, companies rarely walk away from revenue if they don’t have to. Apple would make the case that a $200 iPhone will sell better than one at $400, but RIMM has not be faced with making that kind of price cut to keep its sales strong.

One of the key advantages of the Blackberry is that it is not meant to be an iPhone. Its major attractions are not multimedia features or a large series of software downloads. The Blackberry is prized for its focus on e-mail and corporate managements and IT departments depend on that to make the device a utility and not a repository of endless possibilities.

There is not much in the iPhone that threatens the strength of the Blackberry. It is a box with a keyboard.

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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