You can only assume that fortune 500 CEO's are clueless for so long before you start to assume that they're merely disingenuous: They dismiss all of the competition's products and features until they can release their own copies.
Looking at the recent Blackberry OS's, it's clear that they aren't putting very significant engineering resources to improving the user experience. It's really too late IMHO unless they have some uber-project on the back burner a la Palm's Web OS.
Reading this makes me glad I chose to skip them.
What you gain in potential typing ability is offset by either a larger overall device (by volume) or a smaller screen. Both offset the potential increased usability of the keyboard.
Additionally, there is more to usability than simply having keys. In fact, there are some huge usability gains to be had with an on screen keyboard. For example, when typing into an email field, the keyboard changes to specialize for keys important for creating email addresses. Same with fields meant for URLs, or numbers, etc.
On an iPhone, this is merely a way to compensate for the lack of real-estate you can dedicate to the keyboard. On a blackberry you have all of these keys accessible as alternates by holding down the ALT key. This includes all of the letters, numbers, backspace, enter, shift keys and these characters: ()_-+@#*/:;;"?!,$.
Typing on a blackberry is much easier and quicker, making it a lot better for email and chat.
I'd personally like to a new blackberry all the same, except the screen would also be a touch screen. Keep the small laptop-like touchpad, though.
I don't actually have a touchscreen based phone or a tablet, but I can easily see that people want them because of the numbers that have been sold.
The reason I haven't got one is because my current phone is doing just fine and I like to keep my stuff until it is broken beyond repair before replacing it. Touchscreens vs keyboards are a long-term no brainer decision, buttons are mechanical, touch screens are 'solid state', requiring no moving parts other than the fingers of the operators.
They allow for larger screens and don't require slide-outs or other weak links like that to operate. They'll probably be cheaper in the longer term to manufacture than a keyboard. And they use the most logical interface that we know of, simulating the 'real world' where you press on the thing that you get your 'feedback' from.
I think the iPhone is a lot like the Wii console. Touch screens on phones are somewhat like WiiMotes, it's a novel approach but I do think it's questionable whether touch screen technology has staying power.
One of the biggest signs it is a fad is the inability of competitors to gain significant traction with similar devices. "WiiMote" like accessories for other game consoles has largely fallen flat, and likewise there hasn't been a significant touch screen competitor to iPhone.
Whether you agree or not, just looking at the market trends I don't think having a touch screen or not is going to be a key differentiator in the next big smart phone.
I would be surprised if video gaming goes back to being as much of a "niche" thing as it used to be, and shocked if non-motion control gaming became preferred by the mainstream.
Besides, competitors don't have seriously competitive "waggle" devices out yet to compare market success against, and, what's coming doesn't seem to be substantially better than Wii on a level that most people are going to care about.
I'd wager that they'll come out with an Android device in a year or two before slowly fading into Palm like obscurity.
But one thing that's going to stick is their contracts with businesses. Almost every business that deploys devices to their employees issues blackberries, and they make a lot of money off the Business Enterprise Server and integration with Microsoft Exchange.
RIM has only recently emphasized the consumer smartphone market, relative to other companies like Nokia and Apple which have only done consumer the entire time they made smartphones.
Nobody's going to oust RIM in the business market any time soon.
If I owned RIM stock, this would be such a trigger point.
I sincerely hope that if Lazaridis said anything remotely similar to what the article says, that he was actually pointing to the fact that there are multiple ways to get your mobile OS on a larger screen, and a full blown tablet isn't the only one.
With respect to touch-screen popularity, the article says 'touch only' phones. And it is true that many people prefer a click keyboard AS WELL AS a touch screen.
