Survey: BlackBerry owners checking out new iPhone

[706VZWUser]

By Phil Carson
Story posted: July 10, 2008 - 2:20 pm EDT -- Story modified: July 10, 2008 - 2:21 pm EDT

Crackberry addicts are 60% more likely to visit Apple Inc.’s Web site — presumably to peruse the new 3G iPhone’s features — than owners of other handsets, a survey of United States consumers by Compete Inc. found.

The next likeliest, in descending order, are owners of Palm Inc., Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp. devices.

Because Research In Motion Ltd. and Palm devices are exclusively smartphones, the segment in which iPhone plays, they are the likeliest companies to suffer from 3G iPhone sales, according to Elaine Warner, director of client services at Compete.

In contrast, Motorola and Nokia sell broad portfolios of devices and thus just a portion of owners of devices by those companies are likely to express interest in the iPhone.

But Compete will do post-iPhone launch research to see if interest in the new, 3G iPhone translates into pain at those smartphone vendors, Warner said.

The conventional wisdom in the industry is that RIM’s new Bold device will be positioned to appeal broadly to consumers, not just enterprise users, Warner said. Industry analysts, she said, predict a “collision course” between the new iPhone and RIM’s new Bold. But in a recent presentation by RIM, she said, RIM placed emphasis on Bold as an enterprise device.

As RIM combines consumer-friendly design and multimedia features with its traditional enterprise productivity tools, however, the company may have the flexibility to position the device as it sees fit — depending on the market’s reaction to the new iPhone, according to Warner.

One feature of the upcoming Bold, lacking in the new iPhone, is a program by DataViz that allows collaborative editing of Microsoft Corp. documents, Warner said. The Bold is anticipated to launch in the second half of this year.

In the bigger picture, Compete expects fewer subscribers to churn for the 3G iPhone, because 85% of “pre-churners” (current customers of one carrier checking out another carrier’s offerings) still have at least six months left on their contracts.

“It’s hard to believe that they’ll jump ship,” Warner said, due to early termination fees.

Warner attributes the significant churn after last year’s initial iPhone launch to swarming by Apple fans.

“This (new) iPhone is drawing a more mainstream consumer and the churn we expect will be more in-line with typical industry trends,” Warner said.