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| Saturday, April 12, 2008 |
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New Apple seeds in Blackberry patch
Ray Beatty
April 12, 2008 12:00am
DID you know that there was once an Australian computer called the Wombat? Famous, even historic - it left the world a legal benchmark. The Wombat was an Apple II clone back in the mid-1980s.
Apple at this stage was the king of the personal computer and it fought like a tiger to protect the copyright of its read-only memory program.
The Federal Court found in favour of our marsupial, then the Full Court swung Apple's way, then the High Court swung back.
Meanwhile the world watched and waited - is a computer program a creative work, like a book or a painting, or not?
In the end Parliament amended the Copyright Act to cover computer programs. Apple won the battle - but lost the war.
IBM had meanwhile brought out the PC and allowed clones and third-party developers free rein, and today there are more than 10 PCs for every Apple.
A quarter of a century on Apple finds itself in the same situation. This time the contest is iPhone versus Blackberry.
That ubiquitous corporate yuppie tool has built itself a powerful fortress and it's going to be a long siege for Apple to conquer it.
Its major disadvantage has been self-inflicted: it did all the third-party development itself, whereas Blackberry has more than 650 companies devising programs and applications and games and gimmicks every day.
Apple boss Steve Jobs is no fool, and he learned his lesson all those years ago. In March he amazed the world: Apple unlocked the flood gates and encouraged the developers to flow.
For all the little computer companies it was like Christmas.
Papa Steve gave them the chance to create the enterprise mobile phone that they had always wanted - and that Blackberry already has.
Now they can create the hundreds of programs like you have on your office computer. These include access to music, movies, video, graphics - all working off your iPhone.
But of course Blackberry and its third-parties have been doing this for years. They have their own devotees.
And you can bet they won't stand still, so look forward to some fireworks and some great deals.
Mind you, Apple isn't all generosity - it also expects its pound of flesh.
Any iPhone application you successfully sell will be subject to a royalty fee of 30 per cent. Ouch, that puts a premium on the product's cost.
There's one major roadblock to this cosy plan for a happy marriage. And that is the problem of penetrating the glittering corporate market.
It has taken the MD a couple of years to get the hang of writing emails on the golf course and you can be pretty certain that he will be reluctant to learn a new machine in a hurry.
The same goes for his many executives, and the IT department which has a lot of expertise invested in keeping everyone's Blackberries humming.
Word on the street is that iPhone has not made much progress in penetrating the city skyscrapers - and that's where the real money is.
Now that Jobs has opened the field to the band of Apple developers, he must be anxiously waiting for one of them to invent the irresistible killer application that will drag in the punters and make Blackberry jam.
Source: News.com.auLabels: Apple, BlackBerry, iPhone |
| posted by Perimbean @ 12:57 AM |
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