Apple and RIM rumour forgets one thing

Stan Beer
Sunday, 04 June 2006 15:59

Opinion and Analysis

It seems that an analyst can speculate about virtually anything these days and before too long rumours will be circulating and start to be taken seriously. The latest such speculation, initiated by Peter Misek, an analyst with Canadian venture capital firm, Canaccord Capital, is that iPod maker Apple may team with Blackberry maker RIM. There’s only one problem – the chances are slim to nothing that Apple will do it.

I know I’m not a Canadian analyst who makes a living out of watching that excellent Canadian mobile technology company Research in Motion (RIM). I know I never predicted that RIM would form a partnership with Intel. For that matter, I never envisaged the Apple partnership with Intel. I also have absolutely no insight into what Intel may or may not be urging both companies to do.

One thing I do know, however, is that Apple is a hardware company that likes to control its own hardware. Another thing I know is that just three weeks ago we ran a substantiated story on this very site that outlined details of Apple working on its own iPod 3G mobile phone with Japanese company Softbank. As the story relates, Softbank president, Masayoshi Son and Apple CEO, Steve Jobs have met and reached an agreement to release a 3G iPhone for the Japanese market sometime in 2006.

The idea of Apple bringing its own iPod mobile phone to market appears to be more in line with the company’s culture than forming a joint venture with another hardware company that plays in a totally different market space. Apple is a company that does not like to share its brand and it likes to develop its own technology. Neither of those two philosophies appears to fit a Blackberry partnership.

Apple has already had one abortive attempt at a mobile phone partnership with Motorola, which has to date yielded a poorly selling iTunes capable mobile phone called Rokr. Steve Jobs is a CEO who has made his share of mistakes at Apple. Prior to the release of the first Macintosh, Jobs was responsible for his company’s very own equivalent of the Ford Edsel, the Apple Lisa. As the Macintosh showed, however, Jobs generally doesn’t make the same mistake twice.