Oh man. This thought hadn’t crossed my mind after I heard about the Blackberry-on-Windows-Mobile announcement.
There are still a few things that need to be addressed before I’d buy into such a situation:
- Having to change to AT&T irritates me. Apple needs to seal some deals w/ the other carriers.
- More apps, or opening the platform to third party devs.
- The battery’s not replaceable. I know they sorta fixed this issue on the iPod, but I can live w/o my iPod if I have to, but as a well-connected bachelor, I had no need for a home phone, and my iPhone dies, I’m w/o connectivity. I can’t have that.
- Increased storage capacity. As I get more and more into watching podcasts, I find that I can live w/o so much music, but video podcasts take up space! You did this to me, Apple — address my needs!
Beyond that… I would loooove to have an iPhone w/ Blackberry on it.
RIM: meet Apple. Apple: meet RIM. Don’t come out of this room until you get this done.
Earlier this week, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion put out a press release about a new BlackBerry Application Suite for Windows Mobile 6 devices that will allow select Windows Mobile powered PDAs to run a “Virtual BlackBerry” of sorts like an application within Windows Mobile 6.
Here are my 5 reasons why RIM should create a Virtual BlackBerry Suite for the iPhone.
* The BlackBerry and the iPhone go after different demographics. This may change over time, but, the BlackBerry and the iPhone simply aren’t competitors right now. RIM doesn’t have to worry about declining business user sales because of the iPhone. Why not pick up some extra subscriber fees from iPhone users that want to check email like on a BlackBerry.
* iPhone users would have a ton of applications already developed for the BlackBerry available to them. Word on the street is that third party applications won’t be available for the iPhone so coming pre-loaded with a Virtual BlackBerry OS would open the iPhone to the thousands of BlackBerry applications already developed.
* iBerry, undoubtedly the perfect name for a Virtual BlackBerry client running on the iPhone, just sounds cool.
* And finally, because no matter what RIM does, Apple will eventually sell millions and millions of iPhones to consumers at a rate unlike anything the BlackBerry has ever done and probably will ever do. Microsoft is a huge competitor to the BlackBerry and if RIM is going to put a virtual BlackBerry suite on Windows Mobile 6, why not do the same with Apple, admittedly a “new kid on the block” as far as smartphones go, but, the new kid with the coolest toys that all the other kids want to hang out with.