BlackBerry takes on iPhone with lifestyle apps
RIM’s BlackBerry has been known as a phone built for business, with its wild popularity centred around push email. But with Apple’s iPhone starting to infiltrate offices, Research in Motion is hitting back with a series of “lifestyle” BlackBerry applications from Google, Microsoft, TiVo and others that will take the battle to Apple’s home turf.
At the CITA (Cellular Telephone Industries Association) trade show now on in San Francisco, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said the line-up will include include BlackBerry-optimised versions of MySpace, Microsoft’s Live search engine, streaming radio from Slacker.com, plus a widget that allows TiVo usrs to search for TV shows and schedule recordings on the move.
The new apps will be available before the end of the year. (Australia’s Seven Media Group – home of Channel 7 and Yahoo7 – began selling set-top boxes made by the US-based TiVo in July. Seven’s contract covers both Australia and New Zealand, but plans for this side of the ditch have yet to be announced).
This is not the buttoned-down BlackBerry’s first foray into goofing off. At CITA last year, RIM unveiled Facebook for BlackBerry, which has since been downloaded 2.5 million times.
BlackBerry also announced an expanded partnership with Google.
The search giant has updated and streamlined its free-for-download Mobile App for BlackBerry, which allows BlackBerry-specific versions of Google’s Search, Picasa, Gmail, News and Reader apps to be accessed from a single search bar.
BlackBerry users can access Google’s mobile apps by pointing their phone’s browser to http://m.google.com/.
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Comments and questions6
This is a loosing battle. Look at the 'keyboard' on that flip phone. That is ridiculous, the iPhone on screen keyboard is much easier to use. Also, there is no 3G network on blackberries, but then, they are very limited and really only do email, whereas the iPhone does anything you can do on the laptop. plus a lot of GPS and satelite enabled applications, 1000's of applications, etc..
Get the iPhone
The Tivo app is a nice addition for the Blackberry if you go the Tivo route.
However, if you don't want to be limited by the small hard disk in the Tivo and don't like the expensive Tivo subscription fees and have a Mac and an iPhone or iPod Touch, then the Australian-based IceTV service is worth looking into.
Our lounge-room iMac media centre is running 2 of Elgato's excellent EyeTV Digital TV tuners and with an annual subscription to IceTV here in Australia, you can install the free IceTV iPhone app and remotely schedule TV shows and movies to record while away from home.
It works very well.
-Mart
The iphone is nice and all, but as soon as the hype dies what are you left with? How can you have a phone centered around multimedia, and not have the ability to make a video. TRASHH. The flip has camcorder, and flash. Plus, i do believe they will be making many apps to match what iphone has. it's better as a smart phone too. The mobile microsoft word etc. Im getting the 8220.
ummmm....yeah I want to pay rim more to "forward" my mail from the server they require. And I want physical buttons that can break, and are forever locked in stone.
Sent from my year old iPhone, which already rocked rims world.
In the next 30 days we'll see how RIM fares in Round 1 of it's life and death bout not just with Apple; but with an industry that's moving beyound what RIM has to offer. Not too mention that corporations are cutting back on purchases- RIM's supposely stronghold is weakening and looking old.
Let's face it e-mail is great; but there's a whole lot more people want. The iPhone with the Apps Store is showing this.
Let's see what impact the iPhone 3G has on RIM. I think it will be substantial.
Have you ever given thought to the fact that Apple designs multimedia production software such as FCP, Motion, and iMovie? Do you think it would be very difficult for them to add a video camera app in a firmware update? Or how about drag and drop video editing right on the phone? I bet you'll see this in '09. The difference will be ease of use and fun factor. I have an iPhone with a little 2MB camera and no flash and guess what? I have taken over 200 photos with it about 4 months. My old phones with cameras in them, no matter what the specs, were never used because I couldn't do anything with them. With all the apps for iPhone, I can do tons of stuff with these photos. So, once Apple adds video recording and editing, it will be by far the best implementation. Have you seen iPhone usage data on Flikr? They get a lot of photos off that device despite it's limitations. Similar things will occur on YouTube once the video recorder app is added.
Have fun with your mobile Office product. I'm off to play with my 140 apps on my iPhone and my mobile Safari browser with multi-touch.
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