Amid the firehose of announcements at this morning’s Apple event, one in particular stood out. The first real combined sales number for the iPhone and iPod touch. Apple has sold 30 million of them. Of those, 17 million were iPhones. The remaining 13 million were iPod touches.
Palm hasn’t yet set its price or launch date, but it already has a winner on its hands in the Pre. That’s the word from RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky, who gave the device one hell of a write-up this morning. Seems Abramsky, who had previously been neutral on Palm, now believes the company has a chance at “smartphone leadership.”
Research in Motion’s effort to emulate Apple’s phenomenally successful App Store has a new name: BlackBerry App World. Not much of an improvement over “BlackBerry Application Center,” but an improvement nonetheless.
Troubling reports today from Japan about Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Bold. NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile carrier, has suspended sales of the device after receiving multiple reports that it’s prone to overheating. This just days after the Bold’s debut in Japan.
Two weeks after Canadian regulators dropped the hammer on Blackberry maker Research-In-Motion for its stock option backdating scheme, the Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped it again. Today, the agency charged four RIM execs with illegally granting stock options to company employees over an eight-year period from 1998 through 2006.
Earlier this week Research in Motion revealed that “certain of its officers and directors” had reached a settlement with the Ontario Securities Commission over backdating stock options. Now we know who those certain officers and directors are: Co-Chief Executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, Chief Financial Officer Dennis Kavelman, and Finance Director Angelo Loberto.
Lots of chatter this past week about the Palm Pre and the Web OS on which it runs–most of it overwhelmingly positive, if not euphoric. Clearly, Palm is on the mend. Still, the fact that the company is entering a market characterized by fierce competition and a furious pace of innovation puts it at an enormous disadvantage. Further, to stage a comeback, it needs a thriving developer ecosystem. And by some accounts, Palm’s developer ecosystem is in disrepair.
Palm bet the company on a new handset today. It’s called the Palm Pre, though given the company’s faltering business, a better name for it would have been the Palm Hail Mary. It seems a slick little device. But is it formidable enough to stand its ground next to Apple’s iPhone? Palm certainly seems to think so. In fact, the company is so confident in the Pre that CEO Ed Colligan seems to think it won’t need a sub-$200 price point to pull market share from Apple.
Contrary to popular opinion, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Storm is not a smartphone. It’s a Netbook. So says Mike Lazaridis, the company’s founder and co-CEO, who apparently hasn’t seen an Eee PC lately. Asked by CNet Asia if he viewed Netbooks as a competitor to RIM’s BlackBerry devices, Lazaris, referring to the Storm, said, “These are Netbooks. They are just smaller.”
Apple’s iPhone hasn’t supplanted Research In Motion’s BlackBerry as the gold standard of mobile business tools, but give it another year or so and it just might. According to new research from ChangeWave, the iPhone has steadily increased its market share, growing from just 11 percent in June to 23 percent. Meanwhile, the BlackBerry lost a point of market share, falling to 41 percent in the same period.
Oh, they’re all piling on now. This week has brought with it bad news from Palm, Research In Motion, Adobe, AT&T, and Nokia. Now AMD has joined them as well. In a terse statement issued this morning, the company warned that its fourth-quarter revenue will come in significantly lower than previously expected, thanks to souring computer sales.
Research In Motion’s downside guidance for the third quarter is playing hell with the company’s share price today. After market close Tuesday, RIM said revenues for the three months ended November will fall short of its earlier forecast. The company blamed the news on product-launch timing, general economic conditions and foreign-exchange volatility, but could there be something else at work here a well? Like an uncompelling product line?
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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