RIM Enters Touch Screen Market with BlackBerry Storm

(Business News & Technology News, 10 Oct 2008)

RIM is targeting its newly announced BlackBerry Storm at the consumer market, but according to Kevin Burden, research director for ABI Research, it's likely to be best known as the first credible touch screen-based device for the mobile professional.

There have been a number of touch screen smartphones announced in recent months, beginning with Apple's iPhone 3G, the Android-based T-Mobile G1 and Nokia's entrance last week with its 5800 XpressMusic phone. Like the Storm, all are aimed at the consumer market and try to appeal to the consumers' sense of distinctiveness and desire to have the newest technology. But unlike the competition, the Storm holds the BlackBerry brand, which resonates with business users differently than do the Apple or Google brands.

"While the Storm is about RIM's continued expansion beyond its mobile professional base, it is still linked to BlackBerry's key selling point, which is its back-end infrastructure that delivers one of the most compelling mobile email experiences from the perspective of mobile professionals and IT administrators. BlackBerry has always been more than just a device sale and that will not change with the Storm," says Burden.

Still, devices are inevitably compared because of the personal nature of mobile phones, and the capacitive touch screen in the Storm will put it up against the only other two models using capacitive screens, the iPhone and G1. The majority of touch screen phones use resistive technology screens because they are less than half the cost and their force detection capabilities enable handwriting recognition, which is important when selling into many Asian markets. Capacitive screens, however, take users' interaction with their devices to a new level—and a new level of expectation—by enabling navigation through hand gestures and multi-touch (although only the iPhone and the Storm have multi-touch.)

"The Storm and the iPhone will be favorably compared because what is evident in both is that the touch screen clearly adds to the experience that RIM and Apple want to create on the device," says Burden. "Neither use touch for touch's sake, but instead deliver compelling multimedia experiences though high-resolution screens that are intuitively controlled by the user. But where RIM ups the stakes is in the tactile feedback that mimics the feel of keying on a QWERTY, which for RIM, is as important to its heritage as the back-end email infrastructure that makes BlackBerry what it is."

In conclusion, Burden poses a critical question: "How important would a RIM application store be to the potential success of the Storm?"

Click here for more information on ABI Research


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