Apple boss Steve Jobs has been getting it back in spades from his competitors, after he yesterday came swinging at Google and competitors’ tablet offerings in particular Samsung’s Galaxy Tab which is due to go on sale next month
After claiming that a raft of 7 inch tablet-computers would be “dead on arrival” when they hit the market to take on Apple’s iPad he was quickly picked up by several competitors who have described his comments as “distorted” and illusional.
Research in Motion boss Jim Balsillie said his comments do not make sense “outside of Apple’s distortion field”.
RIM has said that they will join Samsung in launching a 7inch-tablet known as the Playbook in 2011.
“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7 inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market,” Mr Balsillie said.
He added: “And we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience”.
Apple’s iPad does not support Flash, software commonly used to add animation, video or interactive elements to a web page. This has caused problems for major retailers who have spent millions building Flash based web sites to present their wares.
During his recent rant, Jobs listed a number of reasons why he believed the 10 inch iPad would dominate over 7 inch rivals, including pricing, the availability of apps and the resolution of the screens.
“These are among the reasons we think the current crop of 7 inch tablets are going to be DOA, (Dead on Arrival),” he said.
“Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the seven-inch bandwagon with an orphan product. Sounds like lots of fun ahead”.
Mr Balsillie also took on Jobs’ assertion that the iPhone had outsold the Blackberry in its latest quarter.
RIM’s last fiscal quarter ended on 28 August, while Apple’s ended on 25 September.
“Industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months,” Mr Balsillie wrote, adding that the iPhone had not performed so well in the previous quarter.
Jobs, who was commenting after reporting record profits also took aim at Google’s Android operating system, calling it “fragmented” and said Google was wrong to characterise the software as “open”.
“Google loves to characterise Android as open, and iOS and iPhone as closed,” he said. “We find this a bit disingenuous and clouding the real difference between our two approaches.”
