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Cellphone
Communication at your finger tips - keep the lines of communication open
The
Rim Blackberry™
Circus continues
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A well known restaurant has a
slogan "Roll up the rim to win." Is now the best time to spoil ourselves with a
Research In Motion (RIM) Blackberry™?
We think not.
Now that the circus is over
…for the time being…we still do not recommend buying the RIM (Research In
Motion) Blackberry™. We ourselves do not own the RIM and never have owned
one.
On May
1, 2006 Visto launched another lawsuit contending infraction of patents.
RIM has launched a countersuit. And so it continues. It is a safe guess to
say that this is not the end.
We are aware that our
position is not a popular one.
Not since the 1980s
when the jingle “I adore my 64” was pervasive, has a technology cult been so
infectious. RIM’s stock in every sense of that word, has soared to
unprecedented heights. How else could one explain the skyrocketing of its share
price immediately after the announced agreement with NTP despite the fact that
almost simultaneously, RIM predicted that sales of the Blackberry™
devices would drop by some 20%.
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On whether this
cult status is merited or not we will not comment. Those who like the
Blackberry™ like it’s ergonomics – we do not. Different strokes for
different folks! That is not the reason we do not recommend the
Blackberry™.
Others see the twin attraction of efficiency of band width and efficiency of
battery usage. And there is much to be said for the latter. There has been
highlighting of the glut of bandwidth worldwide and in the fairly recent past,
this glut was in some ways responsible for the bursting of the technology bubble
of unhappy memory. We have long argued for the development of better sources of
power for mobile devices. That the Blackberry™ is energy efficient is indeed a
“powerful” positive.
But
in the “current” situation, bandwidth efficiency and battery efficiency
comes with a tradeoff. In the Blackberry™ situation it is at the expense of
the graphics. Where at the moment there is a increasing trend to
“cellevision” – television over the cell phone - many would find this at
least irksome. Other smartphones do indeed give much better graphics. One
which comes to mind is the Palm Treo™. We do not own one of these either.
Nor are the inadequate graphics the main reason we cannot recommend the RIM
Blackberry™.
The
aforementioned circus ended March 3, when RIM agreed to pay NTP the sum of
$612,500,000 to settle the dispute. Just a few short years ago, when the
NTP first filed suit, the whole thing could have ended then and there for
$25,000,000, but then the ante was upped to $54,000,000 and so it went –
but neither is this the main reason we do not recommend the Blackberry™.
To be fair to RIM, it has
been suggested and is still being suggested that the patent dispute with
NTP initially was seen more of a nuisance thing than anything else and
later developed into a serious affair. RIM more or less thought that by not
giving it serious consideration, it would go away. It is troubling that
there are other disputes pending worldwide. This almost certainly will not
affect the RIM Blackberry™ in North America but if the squabble with NTP
was as admitted by RIM to be a distraction, so – to a lesser extent no
doubt - will the solution to the other suits pending.
Research in Motion presents its suite of Blackberry™: ”Blackberry™ for
Life”, “Blackberry™ for Work”, “Blackberry™ for Enterprise”, “Blackberry™
for Small & Medium Business”, “Blackberry™ for Government.” There is hardly
much left. In other words RIM is telling anyone who will listen that
Blackberry™ is essential. Many who adhere to the RIM cult also feel this
way. But RIM also was prepared to run the risk of all those people in their
largest market of losing their service. Not exactly most people’s
understanding of a service company. That is the main reason
we can not and will not recommend Blackberry™.
The latest
goings on appear to verify what many are saying "there are too many
uncertainties with Research in Motion's Blackberry™.
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