Steve Job and Mike Lazaridis draw guns once again. The all new Blackberry Bold could very well be an alternative for the iPhone. The two well known CEOs could as well be striving towards the same peak. Even though the multi touch screen feature was available to iPhone users exclusively but the Bold wasn’t far behind...Or was it? Was the Bold targeting the same market that Apple had already captured?
With more than 270,000 iPhones sold in the first 24hrs of its launch in 2007, the numbers may rise well over a million now. RIM however launched the Blackberry Bold on 12th May 2008. Even though Mike Lazaridis was at the forefront of the ‘war against touch screens’, he eventually realized that Apple had made the touch screen work towards their advantage.
The Bold wasn’t necessarily a race towards achieving the hold over the iPhone users, as the actual design of the Bold was created in 2006, as commented by Lazaridis. But before we go ahead and take Blackberry’s side, think about this for a moment, the Bold is the first Blackberry to synchronize with ‘iTunes’, while Apple has been doing that for as long as ‘forever’.
Lazaridis did retaliate with all guns blazing, stating that the market demanded more from a phone, i.e. they should be able to run PC applications on them without making them bulky and cumbersome and RIM came out with the solution, despite of the features being hardly different from the iPhone.
I’m not stating that the Blackberry is ripping off the style of the iPhone but come on!! , it’s just the look that’s different. We just can’t blame Apple for thinking ahead and not waiting for the competitor to reap the profits. Yes, yes, I know that the Bold has unprecedented performance when it comes to office applications and high speed internet service but does it really matter now?, because Apple launched of it a year ahead of them.