July 3rd, 2007
BlackBerry CEO: iPhone's helped us
Apparently following the “high tide lifts all boats” mantra, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie views the iPhone as a device that is focusing such attention on enhanced-featured mobile devices that BlackBerry is catching a kind of marketing contact high.
“I’ve said before they (Apple) did us a great favor because they drove attention to the converged appliance space,” explained Balsillie in a conference call after last Thursday’s corporate quarterly earnings announcement. “The attention to it has quite frankly been overwhelmingly positive for our business.”
Balsillie is partly right. I wonder how many potential iPhone customers have looked at their communications needs- and the iPhone’s no-rebate $499-$599 price- and they decided they needed a device with business functionality instead.
Kind of wishing for a Lexus but realizing all you need is a Camry.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
