BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis is preparing to add cameras and music players to the most popular hand-held computer, to match Palm’s Treo and Motorola’s Q phone.
While Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry, is negotiating to settle a five-year patent battle that may close down the service, a bigger threat may be competition.
“There’s a lot of room for new stuff” in the BlackBerry, Lazaridis said at his headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. “Adding multimedia technology is inevitable.”
Research In Motion said last week it’s in talks to end a patent dispute with NTP Inc., a sign that a resolution may be reached before a court rules on halting service in the U.S. Consumer surveys show that BlackBerrys, whose features are limited to e-mail, mobile-phone and day-planning features, are losing cachet.
More than 602,000 Treos were sold last quarter, compared with 645,000 BlackBerrys, narrowing a gap that stood at 150,000 in the previous quarter. Competition may erode BlackBerry’s market share to 50 percent in 2010, from 71 percent now, FTN Midwest Research analyst Ben Bollin said. A report last week by consumer researcher Brandimensions showed BlackBerrys had lower “buzz” rating than Treos.
“They are putting themselves smack into competition,” said Deutsche Bank’s Brian Modoff in San Francisco.
