Smartphone wars heating up

Sumi Das: Hello, I'm Sumi Das for ZDNet. Joining us today, our Senior Editor Sam Diaz. Sam, thank you for being with us.

Sam Diaz: Sure.

Sumi Das: Okay, so Apple had some news to report about the iPhone and this was interesting given that the iPhone is a product that's only been around for 15 months.

Sam Diaz: That's right. Apple said in its last Quarters of the Earnings called that the iPhone now counts for 39% of the total business.

Sumi Das: More than a third.

Sam Diaz: More than a third. Now think about that. We're talking iPhones, we're talking iPods, we're talking Macs. The iPhone is now 39% of its business. Now Steve Jobs is on the call to talk to analysts as well and he made a point to mention several times about the competition with RIM. Apple outsold RIM, the maker of the BlackBerry in the last quarter and it announced that based on revenue, it is now the number three supplier of mobile phones around the world. That's pretty big for only being 15 months.

Sumi Das: Sure that sounds impressive, but really is this a fair comparison because BlackBerry hasn't introduced new products -- yet, they're going to next month and Apple introduced the new iPhone in July, so, you know if they can continue to outsell RIM in the months to come that would be the true test, right.

Sam Diaz: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the iPhone launched during the quarter, so there was a lot of excitement around it, plenty of publicity around the iPhone when it launched, so yes. And RIM has been very aggressive in trying to reach a new generation of users. You know they dolled-up some of their other products and they have introduced a couple new things, but yes, there's a lot of excitement coming around the Bold and the Storm. I mean, we're looking at two new products out there. A lot of excitement building around them, Wi-Fi capability, touchscreen built-in, faster processors and now even a new app store, so you can download...

Sumi Das: That sounds familiar.

Sam Diaz: Those apps. Yeah, that sounds familiar, does it? Takings a lesson from Apple out there on the app store. Apple had 200 million downloads just coming up here. So they've had 200 million downloads, quite of excitement around that and so, RIM is taking a lesson from there as well.

Sumi Das: And they're both taking, sort of two different tactics. Apple started off with a lot of consumer...

Sam Diaz: That's right.

Sumi Das: Customers and they moved into enterprise and you've seen that RIM is really done the reverse.

Sam Diaz: And right. The BlackBerry was definitely a corporate tool early on. It has definitely moved from the enterprise trying to gain some attraction in the consumer market.

Sumi Das: But this is not just a two man race. There's another player out there.

Sam Diaz: That's right. As you know, Google has introduced the Android operating system and just recently, T-Mobile has launched the first Google phone called the G1. There hasn't been a lot of excitement around it. It's definitely not like iPhone exciting as it is, but you know, the interesting thing that Google did was they opened the entire source code. This isn't just a software developer's kit. They're encouraging developers to create, create, create. And while I don't think that we'll see a big battle with Google and the Android phones in the holiday season, early 2009, I think we can see Google gain some grounds as more developers get familiar with Android and start launching products around it. We'll take a market share away from RIM, we'll taka a share away from Apple. We'll see what happens in '09.

Sumi Das: It will be interesting.

Sam Diaz: Yes.

Sumi Das: We'll keep tabs on it.

Sam Diaz: Okay.

Sumi Das: For all the latest, you can always go to blogs.zdnet.com.