[Berry One]

Originally Posted by RxistKJ

how long do you think it will take for competitors to achieve Blackberry prices?

Not too long, perhaps.

Achieving quality of BlackBerry device is a different story. That would be hard as long as BlackBerries are made in Canada by local workforce, and code for devices written not by yesterday janitors in Balngalore but by professional software engineers in Canada as well.

Do you think RIM will be able to maintain approximately 70% of their earnings from proprietary Handhelds?

Name cell phone or smartphone which is not proprietary. Heck, you counter proprietary RIM solution with Microsoft solution like Microsoft is not the leader of proprietarity.

My initial rant was simply referring to the often asked question, "Is RIM a hardware or software company, or perhaps a bit of both".

Is Apple a hardware or software company, or perhaps a bit of both?

there are some very interesting products in development that could chip away at the total market as well:

www.funambol.com (open source push e-mail)
www.emoze.com (free push e-mail in Beta)

This will kill GoodLink and any other for profit software development company specializing on push email solutions for handhelds.

Two companies will left standing: Microsoft, because they have enough money to spend without expectations of profit, and RIM- because they make profits on hardware.

Bottom line, I look forward to seeing the competition and the advancements that are made through competition.

There will be less competition, actually. With GoodLink dead and Visto too because of OpenSource and freeware solutions and free of charge or very cheap proprietary products from Microsoft, where will be competition coming from?