Romeo and Juliet, Leonardo, Bella and Jacob, Apple and RIM. What do these pairs all have in common? They’re locked in relationships that are beautiful to imagine, but doomed from the start. For different reasons each pair has so much potential, but can never realize it.
The iPhone and the BlackBerry are two of the most polarizing technologies in the consumer domain. Ask the typical Blackberry user what they think of an iPhone and you’ll see their eyes narrow, and their nostrils flare. Ask an iPhone user what they think of Blackberries, and you’ll likely get some snarky answer about “apps for that” or web browsing. What if there was a way to bring both camps together, what if there was a way to allow at least one side, to experience in a small way, the beauty of working together. Turns out there is a way, but it will never happen. RIM needs to create a Blackberry Messenger App for the iPhone.
Why Should RIM Do It?
RIM should create the app because there’s money to be made, and there’s a platform to expand. This wouldn’t be any old iPhone App, it would be a premium app targeted at business users. RIM could charge $50 for the app, plus a $5 a month subscription and business users would still buy it in droves. Why? Because Blackberry Messenger is a key messaging platform in the business world, and companies want their employees to have access to it. Though Blackberries are dominant in the workplace, there is an increasing mix of smartphones types used, and if Blackberry Messenger remains closed, companies will have to look to other Instant Messaging (IM) platforms to bridge the gap between all their employees. What if instead of Blackberry Messenger, companies encouraged staff to use Google Talk, or MSN? People on any smartphone platform could chat easily, and one ingredient of the Blackberry special sauce would be that much less important. To fend off the wolves at the gate, and cement their status as the IM standard of business, Blackberry Messenger needs to become platform agnostic, and if they do it right, they could make a bucket load of cash in the process.
Why Should Apple Do It?
Apple should realize that every customer who buys the Blackberry Messenger App is a customer who’s sticking with the iPhone instead of getting a Blackberry. Blackberry Messenger is a killer feature that keeps the Blackberry heads and shoulders above the iPhone as a messaging device. Push e-mail is faster on Blackberry, but at least now there are ways to get it on the iPhone. Speeding up the e-mail client on the iPhone could close that gap. And sure, Apple could (and probably should) create a mobile iChat app to allow iPhone users to chat with each other, but it will be tough to entrench that as the same kind of de-facto standard that Blackberry Messenger has become in the business world. Rather than fight fire with fire, Apple should treat RIM like it does Google. Allow them some real estate on the iPhone and snare in even more customers on the strength of a competitor’s offerings. They can even work with RIM to make the interface more Apple-like so they don’t forget who’s device they’re using. Apple would have a great messaging system, RIM would have a nice new revenue stream, and everyone’s happy right? Not so fast …
Why It’ll Never Happen
Both Apple and RIM are companies who make their own hardware and software. Apple goes out of their way to make sure that their software only works with Apple products (ask anyone who tried to sync the Palm Pre with iTunes about that). They are not in the business of making their competitors products better. RIM is competing fiercely with Apple for dominance in the smartphone market, both in the consumer and the business segments. RIM wants to sell more Blackberries, not give people reasons to buy iPhones, and this move looks like it would be more help to Apple than RIM, but would it?
Think about the economics of a Blackberry Messenger App. Sure iPhone users could get at it, but Blackberry users would get it for FREE… and free is a powerful price. It would be easy to point to the value added of getting a Blackberry just based on the cost of using Blackberry Messenger on the iPhone.
Alas, this is probably just a pipe dream, and who knows maybe Blackberry Messenger PIN messaging will fall by the wayside as a business world messaging platform, but until it does, this is a great way to get apples and blackberries growing in the same garden.