All Things Digital

With its curvier edges, stylish silver trim, half-VGA 480-by-320 pixel screen and improved iTunes compatibility, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) new BlackBerry Bold should be a big hit with IT operations professionals convinced the iPhone isn’t an enterprise-class mobile device but driven to near-aneurysm by discontented employees demanding them.

The device is largely as expected–an iPhonish-looking thing with both GPS and Wi-Fi, 1GB of permanent flash memory, a 2-megapixel camera, full HTML browsing, 3G support on GSM networks with HSDPA access and, of course, the BlackBerry’s one-trick killer app: instant, secure email. That’s a compelling combination for business users and casual ones not easily swayed by the iPhone’s hype juggernaut as well. Indeed, Citigroup analyst Jim Suva says it could boost RIM’s quarterly shipments by 200,000 to 400,000.

But perhaps not without a bit of struggle. The BlackBerry Bold won’t ship until as late as August, which means Apple (AAPL) could beat it to market with the enterprise-friendly 3G iPhone it’s rumored to be uncrating at its Worldwide Developer’s Conference in June. Which has got to worry RIM. After all, the first-generation iPhone had claimed a 28% market share by the fourth quarter of 2007. That’s still less than the BlackBerry, which holds about a 41% market share, but the iPhone hasn’t even been on the market a year.

Turns out Apple (AAPL) isn’t the only company whose smart phones are in short supply this spring. According to Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt, Research in Motion (RIMM) and Palm (PALM) are suffering shortages as well.

In a research note, McCourt says RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl is pretty tough to find these days–online and off. And Palm’s Treo 755p has disappeared from Sprint’s shelves entirely. Customers looking for one must either settle for the Palm Centro or wait until the company releases the next iteration of the Treo 755p or the Treo 800w.

As McCourt notes, shortages like these are bad news for RIM and awful news for the downtrodden Palm. “The abrupt disappearance of the Treo 755p at Sprint is somewhat concerning,” observes McCourt. “This product was selling reasonably well and, although we expect its contribution to be marginal following the 800w’s launch this summer, the 755p’s absence at Sprint clearly means Palm is foregoing some near-term sales opportunities.”

It’s worth noting here as well that Apple is still dealing with a pretty lean inventory of iPhones. McCourt says about half of the Apple stores he contacted had the device in stock. Said McCourt, “While we believe this is related to a product transition, current iPhone shortages are almost certainly causing some degree of missed sales opportunities.”

Well, this certainly throws a bit of a wet blanket on Apple’s (AAPL) aspirations for the iPhone in enterprise.

The iPhone Dev Team, the folks responsible for the notorious iPhone jailbreaks, have cracked iPhone 2.0–before the software has even shipped. After decrypting the version of 2.0 included in the recently released iPhone SDK, the Dev Team jailbroke it so that it will run most any application (see video below).

Quite an achievement. And one that may have inspired shrieks of rage at Apple HQ. Many companies will obviously be put off by the security issues raised by such a hack, and it’s not going to be easy for Apple to close this hole. What’s more, if 2.0 is indeed hacked, it means Apple has potentially lost control of the sole point of entry to the device through which it had hoped to vet third-party applications.

Research In Motion (RIMM) must be smirking into its cornflakes this morning. Unless, of course, this is all part of Apple’s master plan. In which case, Steve Jobs is smirking into his soy yogurt.

NTP has finally found a good use for the $612.5 million patent settlement it won from BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion last year: underwriting more patent-infringement lawsuits.

Last Friday the patent holding firm sued AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile for infringing on its portfolio of mobile email-services patents and demanded they pay royalties on the sales of BlackBerries and other devices that send and receive email. Apparently NTP feels that because Good Technology, Visto and RIM have licensed the same patents, these big wireless carriers should as well. Said the company in its complaint against Verizon: “Verizon’s continued infringement with its present knowledge of NTP’s patent rights and their relevance to defendant’s operations is reckless and willful.”

NTP’s lawsuit will no doubt again raise questions about the validity of its patents, a number of which are still under re-examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office–those, that is, that haven’t already been rejected.

So much for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s claim that “there’s no chance the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” According to market-research outfit iSuppli, Apple’s iPhone outsold all smart phones in the United States during July, outpacing sales of Palm’s Treo and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, not to mention handsets from Nokia, Motorola and Samsung.

In its research note published this morning, iSuppli said that the iPhone accounted for 1.8% of all mobile handset units sold during the month. Although this could reflect first-month demand for a product people had been waiting to buy since January, it’s nevertheless not bad for a new entrant in a very competitive market. And a remarkable achievement for one partnered up with AT&T. “While iSuppli has not collected historical information on this topic, it’s likely that the speed of the iPhone’s rise to competitive dominance in its segment is unprecedented in the history of the mobile-handset market,” iSuppli wrote. “While the speed of the iPhone’s ascent to the top of the smart-phone and feature-phone charts is remarkable, it’s equally amazing that Apple achieved this in the face of numerous, well-entrenched competitors.”

Seems Apple is well on its way to exceeding its goal of 10 million iPhones shipped during calendar year 2008–roughly 1% of global cellphone shipments.

Apparently, my daughter’s third question in today’s video didn’t come through as clearly as I’d thought, which is too bad. Anyway, for those of you who’ve inquired, she said:

“Daddy, can we camp out in front of the Apple store, like Scoble?”

Anyway, I’ve updated the headline to clarify things a bit.

Color Research in Motion Co-Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie unimpressed by Apple’s new iPhone. Reflecting on the advent of the so-called JesusPhone during a conference call to discuss RIM’s soaring first quarter earnings (profit up 73%), Balsillie dismissed Apple’s new device as a threat. “iPhone is launching in one carrier in one country,” he said. “We’re in about 100 countries and 300 carriers. … The momentum we are seeing in terms of product launches, carrier support in terms of product launches of BlackBerries, and subscriber additions is exceptional, and we believe it will continue on into the second half of the year.”

Apparently, Balsillie doesn’t foresee the sort of iPhone-induced “stall” in handset sales that Palm warned of yesterday while reporting its own much uglier earnings. Nor should he. RIM signed up 1.2 million new BlackBerry subscribers in the quarter ending June 2, pushing its total to more than nine million accounts. And it expects to add 1.325 million to 1.375 million new subscribers in the next quarter, with the potential for sales to reach almost $1.4 million. “I think [Apple] did us a great favor because they drove attention to the converged appliance base,” Balsillie explained. “We think the attention given to [the iPhone] and its impact on the dynamic has been overwhelmingly positive for us.”