How time flies….
RIM CEO – February 2007 – “The recent launch of Apple’s iPhone does not pose a threat to Research In Motion Ltd.’s consumer-geared BlackBerry Pearl and simply marks the entry of yet another competitor into the smartphone market, RIM’s co-chief executive said in an interview,” Wojtek Dabrowski reports for Reuters.
Microsoft CEO – January 2007 – “(Balmmer laughing) $500 full-subsidized with a plan! I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine. Now, it may sell very well or not, I, you know. We have our strategy, we’ve got great Windows Mobile devices in the market today, we, you can get a Motorola Q phone now for $99, it’s a very capable machine, it’ll do music, it’ll do, uh, Internet, it’ll do email, it’ll do instant messaging. So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.”
Nokia CEO – October 2007 – Nokia CEO Olli Pekka Kallasvuo said he is “paranoid” about Apple’s entry into the cell phone market. Kallasvuo made the comments on Thursday during Nokia’s earnings conference call. Even though Apple’s goal is to sell 10 million iPhone’s by the end of 2008, Nokia said the significance of the iPhone should not be underestimated.
Motorola CEO – May 2007 – Motorola Chairman and CEO Ed Zander says his company is ready for competition from Apple’s iPhone, due out next month. When asked “How do you deal with that?” by M.R. Rangaswami of Sand Hill Group at the Software 2007 conference Wednesday in Santa Clara, California, Zander quickly retorted, “How do they deal with us?” Zander believes the iPhone will stimulate the overall market for feature-rich mobile devices, including Motorola’s. “I think it’s going to, in some cases, reinforce what we have been trying to do and are doing with the mobile Internet. Applications like multimedia and video and photos and music are going to be done on these devices.”
HTC CEO – September 2007 – Bruce Einhorn reports, “While the technology is similar, HTC Chief Executive Peter Chou believes that HTC ultimately will have an edge in its fight against the iPhone because of its experience working with telecom operators over the past 10 years. Apple may call its device a phone but Chou doesn’t think that, as a handset, it’s up to HTC standards. ‘The iPhone design is very beautiful,’ he concedes. ‘However, the phone design is quite weak; it’s very, very basic.’ HTC, in contrast, understands the different needs of cellular operators and so can tweak its handsets as necessary. That, claims Chou, gives HTC ‘a huge advantage.’”
