RIM has just opened the door for mass corporate sales of the iPhone. This is RIM’s bread and butter (as Jim illustrates) and letting Apple slip in at all is a business strategy so completely asinine it defies description.

On top of all this, most blackberries feels like a vertu or a bang and olufson in your hands, whereas the iphone feels like rushed production (is modern stainless steel sexy now?) chinese factory garbage

Most importantly however, is that the iphone is only ONE phone that mac offers and nothing else. Blackberry offers TONS of different phones, and they ONLY DO PHONES. Who do you think spends more time and money understanding phones?

Exactly.

The challenge will be to see how they market other rumored new offerings this fall which, with the speculated feature set, will be targeted more to the consumer market.

Long time no see!

I have had a Bold from RIM, with beta code, for about a week. It’s a great device, but it’s not the Phone Messiah as a few slobberingly enthusiastic reviewers seem to write — a score of 5 out of 5? Gimme a break.

Excellent screen — but somewhat smaller than Curve’s — difficult-to-use external microSD slot (recessed too far into the handset and mine “catches” the card so it’s very difficult to remove), good keyboard (still deciding whether it’s better than the Curve’s), still mediocre audio player software with few controls (iTunes sync is a plus), 2 megapixel camera with very few settings, video recording (awful quality — beta code), and good, but not sterling, construction.

GPS seems excellent and Wi-Fi seems to connect fast.

But the browser, although miles better than under OS 4.2/4.3, is infuriatingly SLOW on EDGE, 3G and Wi-Fi. Sometimes it’s too slow to even use. Granted, I’m using beta code. So, I hope, the “gold” code will eliminate the sluggishness and perhaps improve the quality of the camera’s photos and videos.

For my weekly wireless Internet column, I wrote a comparison about the Bold vs. the Nokia E71 from the standpoint of whether they represent the future of wireless Internet.

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=526&doc_id=162080&

Both handsets have lots of excellent capabilities and I enjoy using them. But the bottom line: Not really pointing the way to the future.

The Bold is a fantastic product, and should have had more marketing muscle behind it on RIM’s part. I was thinking the same thing about Rogers lack of “ooomph” with respect to the Bold as well.

I’ve got a BB Curve and the 3G iPhone. I was very excited about the Bold in earlier months, but couldn’t resist the temptation of the larger iPhone screen and Safari browser.

Although I’m not in the market for the Bold, I know a number of current BB owning fence sitters that would have been easily pushed into the Bold had the marketing efforts of Rogers and RIM been stronger. Then again, these same people may just upgrade anyway.