RIM Responds to Steve Jobs' Comments

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Posted October 19, 2010 at 9:40pm by iClarified

RIM has responded to critical comments made by Steve Jobs during Apple's Q4 conference call.

"We’ve now passed RIM. And I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future. They must move beyond their area of strength and comfort, into the unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company. I think it’s going to be a challenge for them to create a competitive platform and to convince developers to create apps for yet a third software platform after iOS and Android. With 300,000 apps on Apple’s App Store, RIM has a high mountain ahead of them to climb."

Co-CEO Jim Balsillie provided the following quote to CrackBerry.

"For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field, we know that 7" tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. We also know that while Apple's attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 - 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter. Apple's preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM's August-ending quarter doesn't tell the whole story because it doesn't take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple's Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders. As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story."

Google and TweetDeck also responded to Jobs' comments.

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bob53366 - October 26, 2010 at 1:37am

Jim: It's all about the apps - I have an ipad and spend 5% (or less) of the time surfing websites. As a CEO you need to be a visionary. Sink or Swim!

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Rastreez Plummer - October 20, 2010 at 8:18am

RIM comments is way of course of what Jobs was saying. There response is based on FLASH something that was never mentioned. by the time the RIM tablet comes along FLASH and HTML5 will be working side by side it wont even matter. And with over 300,000 apps I must say the developers must be satifyied with there returns. He should have just teamed up wit ADOBE and make a FLASH tablet.

mibear - October 20, 2010 at 8:01am

I am a iPhone owner.love the phone but want flash also.come on sj

mous - October 19, 2010 at 11:00pm

I am a proud owner of an iphone 4 and I don't see myself with any other phone... but what Mr Jobs doesn't get is that we DO want flash support..

bauub - October 20, 2010 at 9:34am

As much as I do want to see Flash on my iPhone, Flash is still very power hungry. Flash even uses a lot of resources on my PC. If you were to see Flash on your iPhone, believe me your battery will not last long at all. It's time for the web to evolve from Flash and HTML5 is the right path to do so. In a few years, there will be a lot more HTML5 support on the web and people will eventually forget about Flash. Jobs is pushing this for this to happen.