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wrkactjob

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
1,357
0
London
....were given it, most who have an iPhone bought it.

(overheard in an investment bank lift at lunchtime)

but yeah maybe that's right!
 
Seems to be true where I am. It also seems to be true that people who buy a Blackberry do so because that HAVE to, and those who buy iPhones do so because they WANT to.
 
one of the better statements I have heard in a while. Its very true, exact reason why I have a blackberry for work that is 100% paid for and I can use it for personal use if I wanted to but yet I still decide to pay 110 bucks a month to have an iPhone for my personal use.
 
....were given it, most who have an iPhone bought it.

That used to be true even just a couple of years ago. However, things have changed radically since then:

As of the middle of last year, over half of RIM's sales are now to non-enterprise customers.

Which is why they brought in the developers of a Webkit based browser (recently demonstrated), have added an app store, are planning on UI changes, etc. Their customer base now includes a lot of "regular" users.

This is no doubt a fallout of current smartphone popularity, and in particular the lack of an iPhone on multiple carriers.
 
That used to be true even just a couple of years ago. However, things have changed radically since then:

As of the middle of last year, over half of RIM's sales are now to non-enterprise customers.

Which is why they brought in the developers of a Webkit based browser (recently demonstrated), have added an app store, are planning on UI changes, etc. Their customer base now includes a lot of "regular" users.

This is no doubt a fallout of current smartphone popularity, and in particular the lack of an iPhone on multiple carriers.

completely agree. the iphone is the device that made smart phones popular among the general public, so it is fair to say that at first most BB users were given them (because they were primarily corporate phones) while most iphone users bought their own. whether that still holds true or not i would say is up for debate due to the push RIM have been making towards the general public. even those with company blackberries are not always having them forced at them but are choosing blackberries when given the choice.
 
I have a Blackberry that I bought for myself because I wanted it. No one gave it to me and I do not have to use it for work, although I choose to because it's convenient.
 
I had a BB 8820 I bought for myself. The reason I changed to the iPhone, is because browsing on the BB was terrible, always locking up.
 
....were given it, most who have an iPhone bought it.

(overheard in an investment bank lift at lunchtime)

but yeah maybe that's right!

False. Completely false.

Most people who own a blackberry now bought it themselves. Proof of this is over 50% of RIM sells of new blackberry came from the consumer division not their business one. Consumer market buys their own phones.

Reason that people think that is RIM is known as a business phone. Made its name a business phone and for a long time that was its biggest market but it change a few years ago and flipped to the consumer market.
 
completely agree. the iphone is the device that made smart phones popular among the general public, so it is fair to say that at first most BB users were given them (because they were primarily corporate phones) while most iphone users bought their own. whether that still holds true or not i would say is up for debate due to the push RIM have been making towards the general public. even those with company blackberries are not always having them forced at them but are choosing blackberries when given the choice.

I disagree that the iPhone is what made smart phone popular. Now it did change a lot of things for the market and push the touch screen but the iPhone did not make the smart phone popular. Just like the iPod I feel did not make the mp3 player popular.


What apple does really well is they can see a wave coming and building and are able to release a devise at about the right point to really catch the wave. The dodge a lot of the growing pains of the market and are able to get around dealing with legacy problems that RIM for example as to deal with in their OS. RIM can not make use changes to jump forward like other have with out pissing off their customer base.
The point is Apple caught the wave of the growing smart phone market and it was growing before the iPhone came out. The difference it Apple timed it really damn well.

If you want to see some proof of the smart phone market taking off just look at some popular phones before the iPhone and you will see quite a few of them were smart phones. One example is the samsung blackJack was a very poplar phone. The blackjack was released well over a year before the iPhone first came out. This is just one example of a smart phones starting to take off before the iPhone came out.
 
I disagree that the iPhone is what made smart phone popular......
If you want to see some proof of the smart phone market taking off just look at some popular phones before the iPhone and you will see quite a few of them were smart phones. One example is the samsung blackJack....

The what?:confused:

Hmmm must have missed the massive impact that one made.
 
I disagree that the iPhone is what made smart phone popular. Now it did change a lot of things for the market and push the touch screen but the iPhone did not make the smart phone popular. Just like the iPod I feel did not make the mp3 player popular.
You must be living in a parallel universe.

If I think back to 06 just about everyone was using a dumbphone and the latest fad was texting. The iPhone is what got dumbphone people go from texting to full on data usage. And the 3G with its lower price is what really made the market skyrocket.

As for the iPod. All I remember is before it everyone was still using a walkman.
 
I actually bought a Blackberry Bold early last year while I still had an iPhone 2G as I wanted a change.



Sold it a month later and bought an iPhone 3G :eek: Was a nice phone, more capable than the iPhone in some ways too. Just stuff is often hard to find and the Blackberry -> Apple transfer is a bit dodgy. Think I was using 3rd party at the time to get simple tasks done.
 
i mean with the general public, not in general. just look at the consumer sales of smartphones since the iphone. look at the amount of people that went from carrying a nokia (etc) call/text only phones to a smartphone, mobile browsing, emails, facebook. i get what you are saying about jumping on a building wave and then riding it, but no way would the smartphone be what it is today with regular joe shmoe users if it wasn't for the iphone. i'm no fanboy, i just see it this way. look at RIM, it took a surge of iphone sales for them to realise "wait a minute, we thought it was only business execs that wanted emails on their phone". now we have U2 sponsored adverts pushing the blackberry as a media player and general social networking integrated device which has pushed their sales. this was done as a direct response to the iphone being bought by people, not companies. it's the whole competition thing. the competition pushed the smartphone market to what it is now which is why we should love that android is picking up and winmo *shiver* is trying to take steps in the right direction.
 
In my college there are probably as many BBs as iPhones.

I was the only one in high school to have one though, while everyone else used their silly sidekicks :p
 
False. Completely false.

Most people who own a blackberry now bought it themselves. Proof of this is over 50% of RIM sells of new blackberry came from the consumer division not their business one. Consumer market buys their own phones.

Reason that people think that is RIM is known as a business phone. Made its name a business phone and for a long time that was its biggest market but it change a few years ago and flipped to the consumer market.

Yea, might be false if you add the word "now". It wasn't there. It is similar to the difference between market share and sales. Two completely different numbers.

What Apple (and I should say Steve Jobs) is good at is seeing the potential in an existing device that doesn't quite work really well and coming out with a device that does the same thing much better. The iPod is a perfect example of this.
 
I bought my own BB Bold 9700 because I wanted to try it out. Needless to say, while it has its advantages in some aspects, it's no iPhone.
 
....were given it, most who have an iPhone bought it.

(overheard in an investment bank lift at lunchtime)

but yeah maybe that's right!

most people that have Blackberry's have had a pda longer than most iphone users have had a liscense. Alot of people that have blackberry's are business oriented people. Alot of celebrities have blackberry's over Iphones. Government officials use blackberry's. I'd like to see the report that shows people that own blackberry's only because it was given to them. I think if you round up the salaries of all blackberry users and iphone users i think the iphone users would look like minimum wage workers. you're statement should read like this

Most people who have a blackberry were given to them and most people that have an iphone their parents bought it for them.
 
That used to be true even just a couple of years ago. However, things have changed radically since then:

As of the middle of last year, over half of RIM's sales are now to non-enterprise customers.

Which is why they brought in the developers of a Webkit based browser (recently demonstrated), have added an app store, are planning on UI changes, etc. Their customer base now includes a lot of "regular" users.

This is no doubt a fallout of current smartphone popularity, and in particular the lack of an iPhone on multiple carriers.

good post and also throw in there that the more people bought the blackberry curve last year then the iphone. So yes people buy blackberry's and more so than iphones. look it up.
 
False. Completely false.

Most people who own a blackberry now bought it themselves. Proof of this is over 50% of RIM sells of new blackberry came from the consumer division not their business one. Consumer market buys their own phones.

Reason that people think that is RIM is known as a business phone. Made its name a business phone and for a long time that was its biggest market but it change a few years ago and flipped to the consumer market.

Got a source? Official RIM information seems lacking.
 
I don't know as that is a very profound observation. The BB is just great for e-mail, and it's a pretty fair phone as well. If you have to communicate via phone and e-mail as part of your business, it's just a better choice. I suppose most phones purchased for business reasons turn out to be "paid for by the employer," but that doesn't mean users wouldn't choose the BB willingly if they had a choice. Having really fast, easy e-mail is more important for my business needs than being able to chat with a friend about dinner while perusing restaurant reviews. If I could ignore business usage, sure I would rather have an iPhone, as I don't use e-mail for personal use all that much.
 
Got a source? Official RIM information seems lacking.

this is from the npd if you want to go to their website and look it up
Based on U.S. consumer sales of smartphone handsets in NPD’s “Smartphone Market Update” report, the 4th-quarter 2009 ranking of the top-five best-selling smartphones is as follows:

1.RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
2.Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
3.RIM BlackBerry Storm
4.RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
5.T-Mobile G1


so out of the top 5 selling smartphones in the usa 3 of them are blackberry's. There's goes the op's retard opinion that most people have berry's given to them.

smartphone_os_sales.png
 
Just wait until the government forces a shift in this area.

Right now whether you use a company phone or your own, it is paid for or expensed and their are no tax ramifications on you.

In the future the government wants to make company supplied phones or if your company gives you a phone credit a taxible thing.

So if you are getting a phone for business you will be liable for the taxes per year on the phone, services, and monthly just not sure how they will calculate that but it is coming. Right now they do it for certain ppl but in the near furture they want to make it an expense so they can tax it and take more money out of our pockets.

My phone is owned by me and so is my number but my company moved my AT&T contract into their business account, so right now I do not pay taxes, but the minute I have to pay taxes as a benefit to me, I move the phone back into my name, and expense the cost of the phone, the tax implications are less that way as opposed to having them pay for it and then the entire thing is taxed to me.
 
Just wait until the government forces a shift in this area.

Right now whether you use a company phone or your own, it is paid for or expensed and their are no tax ramifications on you.

In the future the government wants to make company supplied phones or if your company gives you a phone credit a taxible thing.

So if you are getting a phone for business you will be liable for the taxes per year on the phone, services, and monthly just not sure how they will calculate that but it is coming. Right now they do it for certain ppl but in the near furture they want to make it an expense so they can tax it and take more money out of our pockets.

My phone is owned by me and so is my number but my company moved my AT&T contract into their business account, so right now I do not pay taxes, but the minute I have to pay taxes as a benefit to me, I move the phone back into my name, and expense the cost of the phone, the tax implications are less that way as opposed to having them pay for it and then the entire thing is taxed to me.

can you provide a couple sources for this? I mean i wouldn't put it past our disfunctional government to attempt something like this for thier profit but i'd like to read more on it.
 
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