Blog Posts by Carmi Levy

News that BlackBerry smartphones are the most secure devices available today doesn't come as much of a surprise. The challenge for Research In Motion will lie in using it to score points with enterprise buyers and turn around its crashing market share.

Trend Micro partnered with analysts from Altimeter Group and Bloor Research on a just-released report that compared major mobile platforms from Apple, Google, RIM and Microsoft and rated them based on a series of factors such as built-in security, application security, device and data protection, authentication, device wipe, device firewall, certifications, and virtualization.

When the numbers were in, BlackBerry's rating of 2.89 was significantly ahead of Apple's iOS (1.7), Microsoft's Windows Phone (1.61), and Google's Android (1.37).

The news couldn't come soon enough for beleaguered RIM, and follows on the heels of the company's announcement that it would refocus its efforts on the enterprise market. With security consistently

Could Apple become the world's first company valued at $1 trillion U.S.? After a runup by investors that's seen its market value grow by over 60 per cent this year alone, speculators are already drooling over the prospect.

They may want to ease back on their predictions. With storm clouds — including a just-announced antitrust lawsuit that accuses Apple and a number of other publishers of collusion on ebook prices — already gathering on the horizon, there's no guarantee that the company will be able to sustain its unprecedented growth.

Counting the sky-high numbers

For investors watching the charts, the numbers make it easy to get caught up in the hype. The iPhone and iPad vendor is already the most valuable company in the world — after a seesaw battle with Exxon-Mobil, it finally surpassed the energy giant for good last autumn. Thanks to huge holiday sales and a record-setting third-generation iPad launch last month, Apple continues to grow at a torrid pace.

Its market capitalization

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, can millions of photos taken by millions of smartphone-carrying users be worth US$1 billion? Facebook is betting they are, and its acquisition of Instagram is more than the company's biggest gamble yet on its own future. It's also a sign that the battle for social media dominance is entering a new, crucial phase where mostly mobile-enabled third party services hold the key to determining who survives and who doesn't.

Instagram may have started out as a hipster-friendly way to take and share nostalgia-tinged photos from a smartphone, but in the wake of Facebook's eye-opening offer, no one's calling it a lightweight anymore. In the 551 days since Stanford University students Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom launched the company, Instagram has managed to create as much frenzy around sharing photos from mobile devices as Facebook did around basic social media activities eight years ago.

Originally created exclusively for Apple iOS-based devices like the

There are no more sacred cows in Waterloo, Ont. And when the last bovine is led out to pasture, Research In Motion's just-launched BlackBerry Mobile Fusion could be seen as the product that started the much-needed revolution.

As RIM aims to put the brakes on its long slide from the top of the smartphone market, it's abandoning a number of old assumptions that were once considered sacrosanct.

Under ex-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the company's technology lived in its own virtual world, with scant attention paid to rising competitors like Apple's iOS or Google's Android. Alternative platforms were barely acknowledged, let alone connected with.

That stubbornness cost RIM dearly, as its our-way-or-no-way philosophy was increasingly at odds with a changing enterprise market. Companies are gradually shifting away from having their IT departments centrally purchase and deploy fleets of devices to their staff — a methodology that aligned nicely with RIM's core BlackBerry Enterprise

It's not as if the markets had no warning.

In the weeks leading up to yesterday's announcement of Research In Motion's quarterly results, a seemingly endless parade of analysts weighed in with ever more dire predictions of impending doom.

    MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY   
            —RIM: 2011's business newsmaker of the year
            —Rooting for RIM: Why we still love the iconic brand
            —Instant view: BlackBerry-maker slips ever further


With the company already on shaky ground as it tried to build buzz around an aging product line months before the expected release of BlackBerry 10-based smartphones later this year, the financial results were expected to confirm what everyone already suspected: that things at RIM will get worse before they get better. If they get better at all.

            —Timeline: The biggest moves in RIM history

By most accounts, the results failed to meet even those lowered expectations, as the company reported a $125 million net loss, a 25 per cent

Take 1,000 or so college-age kids with smartphones and Twitter and Facebook accounts, add in copious amounts of St. Patrick's Day beer and an unseasonably warm and sunny Saturday afternoon. Mix it all together in a student ghetto with a checkered history and you have all the ingredients for a riot.

Which is exactly what happened last week when an unruly mob turned an area in the shadows of London, Ontario's Fanshawe College into something reminiscent of a war zone, complete with flying beer bottles, a burning TV news SUV and even the police riot squad. By the time things were brought under control just before dawn, the area was a glass-strewn, trashed mess, Fanshawe College and the city of London were calculating the damage — both to the bottom line as well as to their respective brands — and the story was making headlines across the country and beyond.

It's obvious that social media helped fuel this mess. Less obvious is the lesson an unruly mob of social media-savvy young adults can

For all the hype surrounding Apple's iPad reveal on Wednesday, the long-term message from CEO Tim Cook's reveal is surprisingly murky.

Make no mistake: It's definitely the best iPad the world has ever seen, and arguably the best tablet on the market today.

    MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY
            —3 reasons to get your iPad 3 at Walmart
            —Microsoft’s harsh words for Apple 
            —Did Apple really create 514,000 U.S. jobs? 

There are a whole lot of valid reasons why millions stopped what they were doing to watch Mr. Cook unveil it to the world, and a similarly large number of valid reasons why so many more have already pre-ordered their own or made plans to line up before the new device hits store shelves March 16^th.

By the hardware specs alone, Apple's once again managed to leapfrog itself to the front of the market. The high-res, HD-capable retina screen renders incredibly crisp text — a boon for users stepping up from e-readers — and lifelike, vibrant photos and

The media madness machine is already approaching fever pitch in advance of Wednesday's expected iPad 3 announcement in San Francisco. But don't be fooled into thinking yet another smash hit product is enough to guarantee Apple's future.

Lurking in the shadows of yet another blockbuster launch are a number of risks that could take the company down a peg or two if it fails to address them:

    MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY 
            —iPad feud highlights struggle to remain relevant
            —Microsoft’s harsh words for Apple iPhone
            —Did Apple really create 514,000 U.S. jobs?

1. It focuses on evolution and not revolution

Apple risks falling into a black hole if it gets too comfortable with its existing product lines and simply bumps up the specs every year or so. A slightly faster, slightly feature-enhanced iPad will obviously boost sales in the near term, but longer-term growth demands more.

For that, the next iSomething - perhaps iTV - needs to establish the company in