Apple, Research In Motion Both Continue to Win

The Wall Street Journal published last month that Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM) rule the roost in smartphones when it comes to making money.

Yesterday I read from Jennifer Martinez at www.gigaom.com that the Blackberry Curve won best selling smartphone in Q2 this year.

In the battle of the smartphones, RIM’s Blackberry Curve edged out the competition to take the top spot as the best-selling smartphone model in the U.S. in the second quarter of this year, according to inaugural smartphone market share data from research firm IDC. Apple’s iPhone 3G S took second place, with the iPhone 3G placing fourth.

She continues:

With its hard QWERTY keyboard and big screen, the Curve (a longtime favorite of Om’s) has stood the test of time and beat out higher-end competitors such as Apple’s iPhone, Palm’s Pre and T-Mobile’s G1. Although the iPhone being limited to the less-than-stellar AT&T network likely plays a role in these rankings.

Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Limited / Blackberry are the top six sellers.

IDC compiles the list by counting vendor sales to mobile carriers, consumer electronic stores, online retail stores and independent distributors, and excludes counting the sell-through to consumers (so thankfully for Palm, the Pre’s creepy commercials don’t play a factor in the results).

This is a horse race I continue to appreciate. Both firms are dedicated to continuous product improvement. Both firms are challenged in the networks they choose. In the northeast Verizon (VZ) is superior but receives the smartphones last, AT&T (T) has all the iPhones but drops too many calls (at least in the northeast).

As a portfolio manager, I am clearly rooting for both sides.

Disclosure: Mr. Corn is Chief Investment Officer – Equities of Beacon Trust Company. Through various equity strategies under his supervision he is long RIMM and AAPL; The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) and Pepsico, Inc. (NYSE: PEP).

Comments

[JamesApple:]

Open up an iPhone and you can see high quality components, great design, and excellently built. The big iPhone multi-touch screen alone is an engineering marvel.

Open up a blackberry and you can see that it is made up of cheap outdated components, badly designed, poorly assembled. The blackberry screen is not touchscreen, and the old QWERTY keyboard takes off half the valuable real estate on the surface. blackberry is simply old tired badly outdated technology trying to play 'me too' desperately trying to take a free ride hanging onto the mighty iPhone's coattail.

Rim will not survive, it should be out of business by no later than the year 2013.

Aug 06 08:53 AM

[Murphy Mac:]

Blackberry unit sales numbers are warped because they give so many away.

Aug 06 09:27 AM

[mikedano:]

I just wanted to point out that the above information did not come from GigaOM, but instead from FierceWireless.com. You can see for yourself in the GigaOM post, which cites FierceWireless.com as the source. The complete, original story is here:
www.fiercewireless.com...

Thanks,
Mike Dano
Managing Editor
FierceWireless.com

Aug 06 09:33 AM

[fcca:]

It is still number one in Q2 and the blackberry is not riding on iphone's
coattail read the article James it is number one the leader. The storm2
which is a touch screen will be out soon and take more sales away from the iphone.

Aug 06 09:34 AM

[User 5045:]

I apologize for that and read may of your newsletters.
Andrew Corn


On Aug 06 09:33 AM mikedano wrote:

> I just wanted to point out that the above information did not come
> from GigaOM, but instead from FierceWireless.com. You can see for
> yourself in the GigaOM post, which cites FierceWireless.com as the
> source. The complete, original story is here:
> www.fiercewireless.com...
>
>
> Thanks,
> Mike Dano
> Managing Editor
> FierceWireless.com

Aug 06 09:52 AM

[fcca:]

Thanks for the full article Mike I would say the blackberry's are doing great placing number 1, 3, 5, and 6. I guess if the tour was out earlier in the Q2 they would have taken 2 place also. I guess they will do it in Q3.It is amazing how well it is doing if you look at how all the iPhone radicals always try to convince us that RIM is going to die. How could all these people be wrong buying a blackberry.

Aug 06 10:06 AM

[PalinTologist:]

Since this is an investment blog and we're all just trying to make a buck presumably--rather than prove 'whose is bigger' the question should be 'which company is going to make the most money' and reflect that success in the pps accordingly. To that end, I think rimm is in a tough place. As someone intimated earlier, you don't make a lot of money by giving your product away for free, as rimm has been doing of late. Bottom line, Without some crafty accounting, I think rimm's going to miss again this quarter, and that can't be good--no matter if they hold every single position on the top ten best 'selling' list.


On Aug 06 10:06 AM fcca wrote:

> Thanks for the full article Mike I would say the blackberry's are
> doing great placing number 1, 3, 5, and 6. I guess if the tour was
> out earlier in the Q2 they would have taken 2 place also. I guess
> they will do it in Q3.It is amazing how well it is doing if you look
> at how all the iPhone radicals always try to convince us that RIM
> is going to die. How could all these people be wrong buying a blackberry.

Aug 06 01:57 PM

[JamesApple:]

The steady decline of Rim versus Apple had been reported. Rim supporters continue to deny Rim's decline. blackberry discounts are steep and getting steeper, blackberry giveaways are deeply entrenched fuelling the deterioration of the Rim name brand. Rim has long ceased to be Canada's pride.

Rim's famous failures are stacking up. Coyotes, $257 million dollar lawsuit loss, shunned from bidding for Nortel assets, continous failure to match or beat the iPhone by its Rim Storm, inability to upgrade the blackberry OS to compete against the iPhone OS, and now the Android and Palm's WebOS. Rim is deteriorating in all areas waiting to go out of business when Rim runs out of blackberries to give away and customers who would be interested in blackberries. The day for Rim to finally close its doors should be no later than the year 2013.

Aug 06 02:03 PM

[JamesApple:]

comparing the iPhone to the curve is akin to comparing the great Secretariat (iPhone) to a old beaten down farm horse (curve).

Aug 06 02:14 PM

[Frank Castle:]

Zzzz James is on a tear tonight.

VERIZON paid RIM the sub for all those BOGO and it was VERIZONS gain - that is 2 / 2yr accounts on their network not at&t. I swear some of you people live in some vaccum. Don't look know t-moible just launch the 8520 for gasp $50!! Amazon is selling them for 1 cent! What will you all say when iPhone is nothing but a typical cellphone and is given away? It's not that far away and outside of great launches has huge dips in sales. RIM still has a large market share, still owns enterprise, still has more devices coming out - on ALL carriers. Apple will still be on at&t at least till 3rdQ 2010 (if not longer if Apple extends it). Apple is the one in the tough spot:

- playing the heavy hand over application approval
- quickly having to patch a SMS flaw
- getting railed for the 3GS "encryption" being anything but

Perhaps the "tablet" will be a huge seller if / when it comes out, perhaps Apple will fix all these issues and revise the application approval process, open it up more, perhaps break with at&t and offer iPhone on Verizon as clearly that is what many people want. Anyone honestly think they would get huge sales on Sprint or t-Mo?

3Q results should be even more interesting with Tour launched on Sprint and Verizon along with tMo 8520 factored in.

I will state lumping the 8900 with the Curve is wrong, it's more from the Bold / Tour family. Why don't they just put out combined sales .. how many Rim compared to how many Apple?

Aug 06 09:34 PM

[mollytjm:]

of course a Blackberry comes in first... businesses still give them to their employees. But of people who choose to BUY a smartphone, Apple does a lot better. I work where everything is still pc and Blackberry...but when when i pull out my iPhone, people say 'i want one' and they complain bitterly about how slow pc's are, since many of them own Macs at home...so they know.

i think it'll take longer than 2013... there's a lot of room for growth in the smartphone worldwide market...and eventually i'd expect Rim to make a smarter phone, though no one innovates as beautifully and FAST as Apple, so they will continue to prosper.
In the long run, Apple, and probably Google, are great long term investments. Apple, a little more so because they have established, popular products and a very admired name.
long APPL

Aug 07 10:05 AM

[JPSmith:]

Amazing how phone discussions generate so much hostility.

Blackberry with it's "old" qwerty keyboard is the best messaging-centric device. iPhone with it's large touchscreen is the best media-centric device.

It's hard to have both a large touchscreen and a physical keyboard in the same form factor. Palm Pre attempts this, with some success, but neither the keyboard or screen are optimal.

It's all about what you want. There is room in this rapidly expanding market for all kinds of devices.

Calm down people.

Aug 08 11:02 AM