Monday, June 16, 2008

BlackBerry at the top of the game . . . and about to fall?

Motley Fool has the most intelligent analysis I've read yet on the upcoming clash between RIM (make of BlackBerry) and Apple (LINK).

One of the points that I hadn't considered was Nokia vs. RIM. Worldwide market share is 40% vs 1%, yet valuation is only $100 billion vs $75 billion. RIM does harvest more revenue per customer, but still, that indicates a lot of room for RIM to fall, or a lot of room for Nokia to rise.

Fool's recommendation is dump RIM and buy Nokia, Apple and Google (for the Android phone platform).

As much as I love my BlackBerry and suspect I'll buy the new BlackBerry Bold, I have to agree. Though as an observer of Nokia mostly in the United States, I can only see their marketing efforts as almost hopeless. They want to launch the new E71 to go up against the Bold and the iPhone, yet they can't even seem to get a carrier to take it on (perhaps At&T).

No one will be able to trump Apple (and perhaps Google) if phone companies like RIM and Nokia don't produce better Web integration through recognizing that their computers are vessels for software, and ultimately software may trump all. This is Google's ace perhaps against Apple. Can they become the Microsoft of the mobile world, providing the software platform for a myriad of players to produce the hardware and software applications and consign Apple to a niche? What opportunity is this for Nokia and RIM? I'm sure they experimenting with Android. Could we see a Nokia or BlackBerry running Android?

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