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John Gruber has posted a really interesting and insightful piece on BlackBerry vs. iPhone, and why he thinks that RIM is, fundamentally, in a very very bad place indeed.
However, there’s one point that I have to disagree with John on:
“In broad terms, BlackBerrys are optimized first for email; the iPhone for the web. What’s more important, an email client or a web browser? For most people, and perhaps even most current BlackBerry users, the answer is clearly the web.”
For the majority of business users, I think John has got this completely wrong. For them, the ability to send and receive emails, and view the attachments which come with them, is far more important than web browsing. Witness the number of users who spend their time in meetings thumbing their BlackBerry.
That’s not to say that John is necessarily wrong in his overall point that iPhone is going to eat RIM’s lunch. But in optimising for email, as John acknowledges, RIM are actually delivering something that’s far more desirable for business than a device that’s optimised for web.
Tags: Apple, Blackberry, iPhone, John Gruber, RIM
I agree. Most web-oriented folk don't simply don't realize that for many businesses, especially outside of the technology industry, email is indeed far more important than web. And obviously web mail doesn't cut it due to the amount of time it takes to get a simple task done.