RIM’s Co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, has hit back at Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ claims that 7-inch tablets will fail in the market, saying consumers are “getting tired of being told what to think by Apple.”
At the release of Apple’s quarterly figures, when the company announced revenues of $20bn, Jobs said he believed the 7-inch tablet would fail, citing that it has less than half of the benefits of a 10-inch screen.
“One would naturally think that 7-inch screens would offer 70pc of the benefits of a 10-inch screen,” said Jobs.
“But remember, screen measurements are diagonal, so in fact it is only 45pc as large.”
Jobs also said he doesn’t see RIM catching up with Apple any time soon, believing it needs to move into “unfamiliar territory” and become a software platform company.
Balsillie posted a blog entry on the BlackBerry site, hitting back at Jobs’ comments.
“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7” tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience,” said Balsillie, referring to Apple’s controversial decision to omit Flash from their devices.
“We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple.”
Balsillie pointed out that RIM has achieved “record shipments for five consecutive quarters” and shared guidance of “13.8-144 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter.”
“Apple’s preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM’s August-ending quarter doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn’t take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple’s Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders,” said Balsillie.
He ended the post by saying that even those within Apple’s “distortion field” will “begin to resent being told half a story.”
