One thing that KitGuru's known for a long, long time and that's the fact that the world never stops turning – and each revolution brings its own, revolution. In the field of mobile phones, the king is dead and the prince is now taking a beating. KitGuru pulls out the trusty abacus and makes some startling calculations.
While Nokia executives ruled the world from the soft leather armchairs in the first floor bar of the Hotel Kämp – swigging mojitos and patting themselves on the back at how clever they were to have moved out of the Wellington boot business. The year was 2002 and the early Blackberries looked like clunking, monochromatic slabs – compared to the phones of today.
Over at Apple's HQ, the iPhone would not even be placed on the drawing board for another 3 years.
Roll the clock forward just a little and Nokia got smashed by the rapidly improving RIM products, which were backed by a very intelligent, global email system and enough security to make even the most cautious VP relax and thumb-mail his mates.
So why the change? How has Nokia (inventor of the Communicator) managed to put itself into intensive care – and how has Blackberry managed to shrivel and die on the branch?
Mobile broadband was considered a huge con by the main carriers when they bid £22 Billion for Tony Blair's 3G licenses. But the ability to maintain a 200kbps connection in a good signal area, has actually revolutionised the mobile communications experience.
It allowed for the addition of multimedia.
On January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the iPhone and the world changed forever. Adding in a smart App Store, meant that Apple could continue to earn enormous revenue from phone sales – long after the customer left the store.
Google's Android is also growing from strength to strength, with many manufacturers releasing a multitude of phones to target a wide audience.
Sadly, RIM's Blackberry seems to only make the news now when something goes wrong. Are customers losing faith in the company?
KitGuru says: Hearing that Blackberry's value has dropped from £53 Billion to just £5.3 Billion is a sad indication that many of today's mobile phone companies may not be with us in the Apple white future we all seem destined to share.
They have really messed up such a strong position in the market. They put too much effort into their tablet and their network issues have made business customers lose faith.
Incompetence and laurel-sitting aside, there’s something quite sinister about the negative publicity Blackberry have been receiving over the last couple of years. Initially I thought (having worked at the BBC beside them) it was just sad little Apple fan-boys and girls taking every opportunity to poke RIM with a stick, but now I wonder if there’s more to it. We all recall the infamous interview walk-out, in which a positive aspect of Blackberry – their security is too tight for the liking of dodgy 3rd world governments – was turned into a negative story. In contrast, I’m trying to think when I last heard a negative Apple story make the mainstream news. Apple launches and will be reported as ‘news’ when really there just free publicity campaigns; pretty scandalous on a channel that is not supposed to advertise. Knowing how lazy journalists often are, I suspect a lot of off-the-record briefings and backhanders to bury RIM. Negative PR is the new industrial espionage after all.
Everyone’s acting like blackberry’s are cool now because the bold is touch screen now. They are still complete and utter crap. DontDoIt
snuggled up in bed with Die Hard 2 on the box, bread sticks, ice cold coke & selection box of goodies!!! ThatsHowIRoll
Some brief research says Apple plans to drop the price of the iPad 2 to as low as $299 USD in anticipation of the iPad 2S/3. Your take?