RIM fires back at Steve Jobs

Yesterday, Steve Jobs decided to make an interesting earnings call, very, very interesting by commenting, check that, ranting on a wide range of things including Android fragmentation, how 7 inch tablets aka the Samsung Galaxy Tab are going to be ‘dead on arrival’, and the people responsible for BlackBerry.

That’s RIM for those wondering.

Well, earlier today, Andy Rubin the man behind Android responded to Jobs’ comments as did TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth. The most interesting response though probably comes from RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie who was just in the news earlier because he revealed that RIM would be launching a 64GB version of the upcoming BlackBerry Tablet.

First though, here is what Steve Jobs yesterday about RIM:

It handily beat RIM’s 12.1 million Blackberries sold in their last quarter.  We’ve now passed RIM. I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future.  It will be a challenge for them to create a mobile software platform and convince developers to support a third platform.

And here is Balsillie’s response courtesy of BGR:

For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7″tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 – 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter. Apple’s preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM’s August-ending quarter doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn’t take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple’s Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders. As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story.

You have to love the distortion field comments.

As for the other stuff, well, what do you think?

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