Comment by ceejayoz
2 days ago
Blackberry took that approach.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2015/05/26/blackberr...
> Instead they comforted themselves with reminders that the iPhone's keyboard was difficult to use and the battery life, terrible. BlackBerry was leading the pack, after all.
I would kill to see the presentation from RIM
This is to Nokia's credit. It didn't work out, but they also weren't arrogant like RIM or Microsoft
I think even when companies project arrogance from their c-suite, it’s more to keep the market happy and calm nerves. I’d be shocked if RIM wasn’t also sweating bullets internally after that iPhone presentation. They weren’t morons, and saw what happened with iPods.
Losing the Signal: How BlackBerry’s bid to one-up the iPhone failed: https://archive.ph/IgW6s
> In the summer of 2007, however, Lazaridis cracked open a phone that gave him pause. “They’ve put a Mac in this thing,” he marvelled after peering inside one of the new iPhones.
> Lazaridis shared the revelation with his handset engineers, who had been pushing to expand BlackBerry’s Internet reach for years. Before, Lazaridis had waved them off. Carriers wouldn’t allow RIM to include more than a simple browser because it would crash their networks. After his iPhone autopsy, however, he realized the smartphone race was in danger of shifting. If consumers and carriers continued to embrace the iPhone, BlackBerry would need more than its efficient e-mail and battery to lead the market. “If this thing catches on, we’re competing with a Mac, not a Nokia,” he said. The new battleground was mobile computing. Lazaridis figured RIM’s core corporate market was safe because the iPhone couldn’t match BlackBerry’s reliable keyboard and in-house network delivery of secure e-mails. But in the consumer market, where the Pearl phone was competing, RIM needed a full Web browser. BlackBerry was a sensation because it put e-mail in people’s pockets. Now, iPhone was offering the full Internet. If BlackBerry was to prevail, he told RIM’s engineers, “We have to fix everything that’s wrong with the iPhone.”
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I know people who were at RIM at the time, including someone who was in the room when they passed around the first iPhone they got a hold of. They firmly believed the iPhone was dead on arrival both because the product was "terrible" (no keyboard, no battery life, etc. etc.) and, more importantly, because they were so confident Apple would not be able to pull off the networking required and people wouldn't be able to use the device at all.
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