RIM to release the Blackpad

According to this Bloomberg article, Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of Blackberry smartphones, plans to release a competitor to the iPad this November: the Blackpad.

Pricing for the device will be in line with the iPad, which starts at $499, the person said. RIM is focused on reaping additional profits from the tablet effort, rather than competing on price to sell a large number of devices, the person said.

In the tablet market, RIM will have to demonstrate how its device can stand out against products including the iPad, which has attracted buyers because of its integration with Apple’s iTunes service and many software applications, or apps. More than 225,000 apps are available for Apple devices, the company said in June. RIM said in April it had more than 6,000 apps.

So they’re going to launch a new device with far fewer native apps, to compete against the iPad which has a mature app store containing tens of thousands of titles and huge brand awareness right now, and they’re going to demand the same price as the iPad? Good luck with that strategy. I have a few questions:

  • Where’s the mobile OS to compete with Apple’s iOS4? RIM still hasn’t delivered anything close to the touch capabilities found on the iPad/iPhone today. This is not a trivial point and I don’t know that RIM has the engineering chops to do it.
  • What’s RIM’s answer to the App Store/iTunes ecosystem? Easy integration is critical to the adoption of a new device like this.
  • What’s the retail strategy — is there a store people can walk in to and get their hands on the Blackpad when it’s released? This has been huge for Apple, and RIM needs a response here.
  • What’s the differentiator? Is there anything about the Blackpad that says better than iPad?

I can see RIM getting some limited traction in the enterprise just due to brand recognition, but I don’t know if that’s enough to take the Blackpad very far considering they’re already late to a game they probably don’t even want to be in. And Blackpad is an awful name.

Hewlett-Packard Co., which bought smartphone maker Palm Inc. this month, said it plans to produce a tablet device that runs on Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system.

HP bought a company with a strong mobile operating system (Palm’s webOS) and tons of valuable patents, and they’re going to put Windows on their tablet instead?

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said yesterday the software company plans to increase its focus on tablets.

Translation: The software company plans to increase its focus on what the innovative companies are doing and attempt to duplicate that somehow.

What I think is likely to happen with these companies scurrying to jump into the ‘tablet’ space is something akin to the commodity PC market: A race to the bottom.

Posted: August 1st, 2010
Filed under: Competition, Hardware, Mobile, Software Tags: , , , | No Comments »

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