Apple gains, RIM drifts, Palm holds steady in the latest ChangeWave survey

Source: ChangeWave

Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry, with a 40% share, is still the most popular smartphone among the 4,255 owners who responded to a ChangeWave survey in September. But Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is gaining fast, according to research director Paul Carton.

"Apple (30%) has seen a huge market share jump since the previous survey," he writes in a release issued Tuesday. "Not only has the iPhone 3GS release enabled them to gain 5-pts overall — for the first time it has also placed them within striking distance of the number one spot in the consumer market."

Palm (PALM) remains far behind at 7%, Carton notes, but adds that "this is the first survey in nearly two years where their share hasn’t fallen – and that’s a clearly encouraging sign."

ChangeWave surveys are often dismissed as unrepresentative — which they are. But in this case, the so-called ChangeWave Alliances' 20,000 professionals "who spend their everyday lives on the frontline of technological change," according to its website, represent the sweet spot of RIM's and Palm's target market.

For more results — good and bad — from the survey, see the charts below the fold.

Apple continues to lead on the customer satisfaction front, with 74% of iPhone owners describing themselves as "very satisfied."

Source: ChangeWave

However, when asked whether they were planning to buy an iPhone, BlackBerry or Pre in the next 90 days, the BlackBerry gained, the Pre held steady and the iPhone fell sharply in comparison with a similar survey conducted in June.

Source: ChangeWave

Carton attributes the fall in iPhone purchase plans as a natural "settl[ing] back" after the "huge spike of excitement" that accompanied the iPhone 3GS launch in June. He notes that the 8-pt drop between June and September (from 44% to 36%) is a lot less than the 22-pt drop he picked up a year ago after the July 2008 launch of the iPhone 3G.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Palm Pixi

The clearest indication at whom Palm is aiming its newest smartphone, dubbed Pixi, is the new Facebook application that debuts in the younger, smaller sibling to the Palm Pre. If that is your thing, then perhaps your gadget has arrived.

At a meeting in San Francisco Tuesday afternoon, Palm chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein kept the Pixi half hidden in the black and orange slipcover that comes with the Pre. The top half of Pixi looks a lot like its older sibling, but when Rubinstein performed the full monty as it were, the device revealed itself as a candy bar-type phone that echoes the Pre’s styling without the slide-out keyboard.

Matte black, with the same sticky keys as the Pre, the Pixi is noticeably thinner and a tad smaller than Pre. Slick was my first impression, and still is. When I put my Blackberry Bold down on the table, it looked chunky by comparison. Rubinstein didn’t noticeably gloat, but pointed out that Pixi is more than 10% thinner than Apple’s iPhone 3GS, and 20% more svelte than any Blackberry device (there is a reason that Pixi is launching at New York’s Fashion Week after all).

What Pixi is designed to do is message.  Message like a teenager with a crush, a band to see, or a class to skip. That’s not exactly the way Rubinstein put it, but in the end that may be the demographic who gets most excited by the phone. Pixi is not designed to go up against the iPhone or the latest Blackberry. That’s Pre’s job. “This is meant to hit a more affordable segment of the market,” Rubinstein says. “Who buys the phone is a matter of personal preference, we are giving them a choice.”

If that choice is Pixi, it includes a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, but no WiFi (with the launch carrier Sprint at least). The touch screen is smaller, and the resolution is not as sharp as the Pre, but unless they are side-by-side it’s hard to get too picky. Will Pixi get rolled out in the corporate world? Not likely. “I will carry a Pre,” says Rubinstein. “For me it’s my workhorse.”

Pixi will be available “for the holidays” from Sprint Rubinstein says, with no more detail on whether that means October or November. Nor did he put a price on the phone, but you can expect it will be priced lower than the $150 you can snag the Pre for (starting today) with a two-year Sprint contract.

The phone runs the same webOS that the Pre does, with a few new additions that Pre users will get “some time in the future,” Rubinstein says. One is the Facebook application, that lets you update your status, read news feeds and message with your FB friends easily from the phone. Other new features include synching with LinkedIn and Yahoo contacts.

Rubinstein has promised a series of products featuring Palm’s webOS, and Pixi makes it a family of two. Like Pre it shows a good deal of promise, especially if it can attract a crowd that can’t afford (meaning their parents won’t spring for it) an iPhone or a Blackberry. Pre hasn’t had an easy time competing in a world dominated by Apple and Research in Motion, and analysts are getting more pessimistic in their projections for Pre sales. If Sprint comes up with a pricing plan on its end that makes the whole Pixi commitment cheaper, this phone could be a monster hit.

Rubinstein, for his part, says he is happy with the progress Palm has made in the three months since Pre launched. He expects to keep the momentum moving forward with Pixi. “When anyone talks about smartphones, we are now part of that conversation,” Rubinstein says. “We’ve earned a seat at the table (alongside Apple, RIM and others), now we all duke it out.”

The Full Specs:

-Connectivity (EVDO Rev. A)

-2.63-inch multi-touch screen with18-bit color 320×400 resolution TFT display

-Exposed QWERTY keyboard

-Messaging support (IM, SMS and MMS capabilities), including Google Talk, AIM and Yahoo! IM

-Integrated GPS

-Multimedia options, including pictures, video playback and music, and a 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera with LED flash, and a standard 3.5mm headset jack

-Email, including Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers), as well as personal email support (Google push, Yahoo! push, POP3, IMAP)

-Bluetooth^® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support

-8GB of internal user storage (~7GB user available)

-USB mass storage mode

-MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed

-Qualcomm’s new MSM7627™ chipset

-Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear

-Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage

-Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective

-Removable, rechargeable 1150 mAh battery

-Dimensions:  2.17 in. (W) x 4.37 in. (L) x 0.43 in. (D)

-Weight: 3.51 ounces)

Jon Rubinstein. Photo: Palm, Inc.

"We must do whatever we can to stop this."

That's how Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs is reported to have asked then Palm (PALM) CEO Ed Colligan to enter into a possibly illegal agreement to stop trying to hire away each others' top engineering talent.

If accurate, it may be one of the most stilted attempts to collude ever recorded.

Colligan's answer, according to Bloomberg's Connie Guglielmo, who says she has reviewed the two-year-old communications:

"Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal."

Is this really how conspirators talk?

Apparently so in Silicon Valley, where hiring practices long overlooked have come under increased scrutiny by the Obama administration.

In June the New York Times reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had begun an antitrust investigation into whether Apple and Google (GOOG) had a written agreement not to go fishing in each others' talent pool — a deal that could be considered a collusive restraint on trade.

Google's anti-poaching smoking gun

Such an agreement between Apple and Palm could be even more problematic, since at the time the two were gearing up to compete head on in the smartphone market. In his Aug. 2007 communication, Colligan claimed that Apple had hired away 2% of Palm's workforce to help develop the iPhone.

Palm, meanwhile, had hired Jon Rubinstein, the former Apple engineering VP who headed the team that built the original iPod. Rubinstein, in turn, had begun recruiting Apple engineers and marketing experts to work on the Palm Pre.

That's what Jobs was allegedly trying to stop.

Apple vs. Palm: Geeks with grudges

According to Bloomberg, the exact details of what Jobs proposed to Colligan aren’t known; Jobs didn’t mention a proposal in the communications reviewed by Guglielmo. He did say that Apple had a lot of patents and more money than Palm if the companies ended up in a legal battle.

According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department may investigate the exchange between the companies even though Palm rejected Apple’s proposal.  “If I were at DOJ, I would definitely be interested,” Daniel Rubinfeld, a former deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust, told Guglielmo.

Apple has declined to comment. And Jobs, according to Guglielmo, has not returned her e-mail.

iPhone and Pre. Photos: Apple, Palm

How often does the Palm (PALM) Pre break down and have to be returned and exchanged for a new one?

That question came up a few weeks after the Pre's June 6 launch when Jesup and Lamont analyst Kevin Dede, citing a decidedly unscientific online survey, reported that the Pre's return rate was a shocking 40%.

Pre Central, the site that conducted the poll, promptly disputed its own results. It ran a second, larger survey and got a slightly more comforting return rate: 18%.

A few days later, RBC Capital's Mike Abramsky weighed in, estimating the actual return rate to be 2% – 3%, a figure he arrived at by throwing out from his estimate of the total return rate  (8% to 15%) any units that were exchanged for new ones.

Now ChangeWave Research has released its own estimate, and while hardly definitive given the sample size, it at least provides some context.

Based on a survey of 198 Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3GS owners and 38 Pre owners, it found that the exchange rate of the Pre (11%) does indeed appear to be higher than the iPhone (7%), but not by much.

Source: RBC/ChangeWave

Palm Pre owners love their smartphones, but not as much as owners of Apple's new 3GS iPhone love theirs.

In a survey of 200 3GS users conducted Aug. 4-11 by RBC Capital and ChangeWave Research, 99% pronounced themselves satisfied, of which 82% were "very satisfied."

In a matching survey of 40 Pre owners, 87% said they were satisfied and 45% "very satisfied."

Nonetheless, writes RBC's Mike Abramsky in a report to clients Friday, "that's the highest score ever recorded in our prior Palm satisfaction surveys and above all other manufacturers except RIM (48%) and Apple (82%)."

Below the fold: what Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM) owners said they liked best and disliked most about their smartphones.

Healthcare professionals would seem a natural market for smartphones, especially if the Obama administration makes good its campaign promise to computerize U.S. health care records.

But which smartphone will doctors and nurses be using?

Software Advice, an Austin-based resource for software buyers, tried to answer that question last week. In what it admits was not a "super-scientific" survey, it e-mailed a questionnaire to 700 healthcare professionals and processed 71 replies. The results, released on Tuesday, show an interesting mix of preferences that vary according to job description.

Doctors, nurses and and students showed a strong preference for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. IT professionals, who seem to have sampled a wider range of devices, also preferred the iPhone, but not as strongly. Health administrators — at least the ones who replied to the survey — were unanimous in their preference for Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry. The Palm (PALM) Pre was a strong second among students.

As the report notes, "most people, regardless of brand, were satisfied with their phones." The Pre and Google (GOOG) Android phones were the only devices to get 100% ratings from their users. The iPhone scored somewhere in the 90s, Microsoft (MSFT)'s Windows Mobile in the 60s, and the BlackBerry around 50% — equally divided between satisfied and not satisfied. (See below.)

Finally, the Software Advice report compared what health professionals are currently doing with their smartphones with what they hope to do in the future. The only health-related activity in wide use today is prescription drug reference, thanks no doubt to the popularity of the Epocrates app, which runs in various versions on the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile devices.

But in the future, as Obama and these health professionals see it, smartphones could be used for a wide variety of tasks, including tracking patients, ordering lab tests, viewing X-rays and CAT scans, making clinical decisions and "e-prescribing" drugs. See charts below:

Six out of 10 doctors isn't a bad result for Apple. On the other hand, a quick Google search reveals that six out of 10 doctors also recommend the wrong treatment for infants with milk allergies, don't understand how private health plans work and smoke Camel cigarettes — or at least they used to.

To the delight of an armada of tech writers, Palm (PALM) has responded to the shot Apple (AAPL) fired across its bow last week with a cheeky little blast of its own.

The issue is whether Apple will continue to allow the Pre to sync seamlessly with iTunes, the feature of Palm's whizzy new smartphone that got the most attention in advance of its launch in early June.

Apple unleashed an iTunes software update last week that shut down the feature. It was accompanied by a sharply worded warning that — uncharacteristically — named names. The update, it said, had "disabled devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre."

Palm responded with a quick workaround. In its description of the new features of an operating system update released Thursday, Palm's official blog saved the best — Steve Jobs-style — for last:

"Oh, and one more thing: Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync. That’s right — you once again can have seamless access to your music, photos and videos from the current version of iTunes (8.2.1)." (link)

Palm can play this cat-and-mouse game — the sort that big companies usually engage in with ankle-biting hackers — because the Pre division is run by former Apple engineers, including the guys who built the original iPod.

But it's not clear how much longer Apple can let it go on. In a lively debate on Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board (free subscription required), participants were of two minds.

Some called for Apple to bring out its legal big guns, as COO Tim Cook has repeatedly threatened to do. "The sync," wrote one investor, "will be crushed in the palm of Apple's quite formidable hand."

Others worried that an infringement lawsuit could make Apple look bad and give the Pre publicity they seem to feel that Palm — whose sales lag far behind the iPhone's — can ill afford on its own.

But according to a report to clients issued Friday morning by RBC Capital's Mike Abramsky, the Pre is not doing that badly in the marketplace. Fresh retail checks at 25 Sprint (S) stores, he reports, show that the Palm Pre's momentum "remains robust."

"We estimate Palm has sold 325,000 – 375,000 Pres to date, ahead of our expectations," he writes. "Sprint stores have stock, but inventory continues to be tight (only estimated 2-4 days), given strong sell-through. Stores are receiving shipments every couple of days, indicating manufacturing constraints continue to abate."

Abramsky's research contradicts reports — repeated in the AAPL Sanity debate — that the Pre's return rates might be as high as 40%. "Most buyers," he writes, "appear delighted with their new Pre user experience." He estimates returns at 2% – 3%, which he says are in line with average smartphone returns.

Top reasons for Pre returns, according to Abramsky:

1. personal preference, i.e., Pre/WebOS not their "cup of tea" and/or too much effort to learn a new OS (particularly for older buyers);
2. other hardware issues (burned out pixels, fit/finish, etc.); and
3. poor battery life.

Abramsky notes that Apple had similar post-launch quality issues with the iPhone. "Notwithstanding initial glitches," he concludes, "user satisfaction with Pre and WebOS experience appears high, sustaining robust sales and limiting returns in line with averages."

Translation: The Pre will live to fight another day.

Illustration re-posted by permission of Judith Hunt. For more her work see here.

See also:

• Apple plays softball with Palm
• Scooplet: The Palm Pre syncs with Tunes
• Apple to Palm Pre: Drop dead
• Apple vs. Palm: Geeks with Grudges

No. 1 handset maker unveils (sorta) its iTunes and App Store killer to little fanfare.
By Anu Partanen, contributor

Finally, it is here! Nokia’s Ovi store, the cellphone giant’s answer to Apple's iTunes and App Store, and a central piece of the company’s new strategy. Well, actually, it has been here for a couple of months already, but who knew?

If you have not heard of Ovi, no one will blame you. Nokia (NOK), the Espoo, Finland-based handset manufacturer, has chosen a peculiar strategy for launching its new online storefront. The strategy being – no launch.

In short Ovi – “door” in company’s native Finnish – is a portal where Nokia phone users can access, store and share pictures, videos, music, maps, games, contacts, calendars, files and more. The online store is only one part of the service, a place where users can download free and paid content onto their devices. The service can be accessed both through a computer and a mobile device.

The vision of Ovi is ambitious. Nokia is taking on not only other device manufacturers such as Samsung and LG, or smartphone royalty such as Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM),  but social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, too. The website has been running for couple of years already, and the store has been open for business since May.

All the more surprising, then, that at least in the U.S. nobody seems to know the service exists.

The launch of Apple's App Store for iPhone a year ago breathed new life into the mobile application business, and companies such as RIM, maker of the BlackBerry and Palm (PALM), maker of the new Palm Pre, have responded with widely promoted applications stories for their devices.

Nokia, however, seems to have hardly made a peep for its store. There have been no ad campaigns, no press releases boasting the number of downloads.

“We’re growing this in an organic way,” says Marco Argenti, vice president of media and games at Nokia.

The company will direct bookmarks on its devices towards the store, Argenti says, and markets it online, for example through sponsored Google links. Eventually the store will be one of the key selling points in marketing of new devices.

The European marketing of Nokia’s new Internet flagship device, N97, is already leveraging the store. According to Argenti, there is a new way of thinking behind all this.

“We’re philosophically more in a software and Internet mentality, where you don’t almost even have the concept of a release. Ovi is a service, not a product. We keep adding content to it and improving it every day.”

Improving it needs. The Ovi site has been plagued by technical problems, with the servers crashing on the first day of business and users facing frustrating malfunctions ever since. The number of apps on offer is still significantly smaller than the volume available in Apple’s store.

Nokia says the reason for the troubles is the complexity of its operations. Ovi store has registered users in 180 countries, works in five languages and runs on more than 75 different devices, which use 4 different operating systems. 27 operators in 9 countries offer the possibility of mobile billing.

At launch Nokia estimated that 50 million devices could access the store, and its hope is that in the end every Nokia device (from low- to high-end) will have a button pointing to Ovi.

Analysts have sympathy for Nokia.

”It is always more challenging for Nokia to launch a service of this size than it is for any of the other handset manufacturers,” notes wireless analyst Julie Ask from Forrester Research. “The number of devices and platforms they are trying to operate the Ovi Store on is broader than it is for Apple, or Blackberry. It is not an apples to apples comparison.”

Another aspect of Nokia’s vision adds even more complexity to the equation: localization. The Ovi Store recognizes where the user is located, which language they speak, and how they have behaved in the store in the past. It then recommends content and applications accordingly. Users are also invited to review and recommend content, bringing the idea of social networking to the world of apps.

“I think Nokia has a great concept that is more advanced than Apple’s App Store,” estimates senior analyst Tina Teng from iSuppli. “Nokia has really recognized the possibilities of wireless social networking and the mobile lifestyle.”

In the U.S., however, solving technical problems is not going to be enough to get Nokia’s vision going. Arguably an even bigger problem arises from the company’s battle with the carriers.

Nokia has always been reluctant to modify its devices according to carrier wishes, preferring to sell devices separately from the service. The strategy works in Europe, but in the U.S. carriers want to control the devices in order to offer them to their customers subsidized.

As the result of these conflicting approaches, in the U.S. Nokia’s phones have been expensive and hard to get. If for example, one wants to by the new N97 smartphone in the U.S., just about the only options are to shop online or to go to one of the two Nokia flagship stores. The phone costs currently $599, compared to, say, a carrier subsidized $99 iPhone3G.

The implications of all this to the Ovi Store are dire: if users don’t have the phones, there’s not much point in marketing content for them.

So far none of the U.S. carriers support the Ovi Store software on their devices, and the analysts say the operators view parts of Nokia’s vision as direct competition.

“Nokia is trying to create a portal where all billing and services go through that channel, at the same time when operators are trying to maintain direct billing through themselves,” says senior research analyst Ryan Reith from research outfit IDC.

Unlike many of the other handset manufacturers, Nokia has invested heavily on its own services, such as maps and navigation, which also puts it in direct competition with the carriers.

“It’s a difficult approach, but I think if there’s anyone out there that can take that approach, it’s Nokia, because of their global dominance,” notes Reith.

Some signs of happier times have surfaced lately. Nokia’s second carrier supported smartphone hit the U.S. market in May, when AT&T launched the E71x. July 19 marked the launch of AT&T’s third Nokia smartphone, one called Nokia Surge, designed especially for social networking. AT&T has also said that it plans to offer the Ovi Store on their devices some time in the future, but so far the company has declined to say exactly when this will happen.

These are however but small steps in an uphill battle. According to Nokia’s second quarter earnings released last week, their sales in North America dropped 6% from the previous quarter and 29% from a year ago. According to IDC, Nokia’s share of the total U.S. handset market has fallen in the past three years from almost 20% to less than 8%.

Luckily for Nokia, North America is only a small part of their business. The company  holds 38% of the total global handset market, and 40% of the smartphone market. With big size come perks: if one market is not working, you can always play on others.

As you may have heard, Apple (AAPL) on Wednesday pulled the plug on a much-hyped feature of the Palm Pre: its ability to sync seamlessly with iTunes.

On Thursday Palm's (PALM) shares took a nosedive, falling 7.4% in early trading from Wednesday's high as the rest of the market was enjoying a midsummer bull run.

But by the end of the trading day, Palm was back where it started Wednesday, no worse for wear.

Because, really, for all the fuss that the trade press made about the flap — Google News turned up 159 articles and 39 blog items — was this the best Apple could do?

Apple COO Tim Cook, who was running the shop while Steve Jobs was on medical leave, has been making threatening noises about Palm ever since his former colleague — and now bitter rival — Jon Rubinstein unveiled the device that many hailed as an iPhone killer.

“We think competition is good. It makes us all better. And we are ready to suit up and go against anyone," Cook told analysts on a earnings call in January.

“However,” he added, his voice rising, “we will not stand for having our IP [intellectual property] ripped off, and we’ll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal. I don’t know that I can be clearer than that.” (link)

The tenor of Cook's remarks, reiterated three months later, led analysts to believe that Apple was getting ready to take Palm to court. Speculation centered on a patent suit over Palm's use of multi-touch technology that Jobs had insisted was heavily protected by multiple patents and which other iPhone competitors — Google’s (GOOG) Android, for example — have been careful not to use.

“If faced with legal action,” a Palm spokesperson promptly responded, “we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves.”

Perhaps they do, because the Pre has been selling for six weeks now and the threatened court actions still haven't materialized.

Instead we get a flap about iTunes.

It may not have been wise, as many have suggested, for Palm to make such a fuss about the Pre's ability to trick iTunes into thinking it was an iPod — something it was able to do because team Palm is chock-a-block with former Apple engineers.

After all, Apple could rewrite its iTunes software at will — and it did. Witness iTunes 8.2.1, released Wednesday, which as an Apple spokesperson helpfully pointed out, "disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre."

This is hardly a death blow for Palm, however. Music syncing was not the only thing the Pre's software does well, and there are any number of third party programs that offer workarounds (the New York Times today recommends dazzboard; Wired.com likes Salling Media Sync).

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for Apple to bring on the heat. If Tim Cook has stronger stuff in his arsenal — as he has suggested twice now — we haven't seen it yet.

Softball photo by Karen Morris.

See also:

• Scooplet: The Palm Pre syncs with Tunes
• Apple to Palm Pre: Drop dead
• Apple vs. Palm: Geeks with Grudges

Growing competition from new smartphones carved into Research in Motion's (RIMM) June sales, according to a report to clients issued Wednesday by Piper Jaffray's T. Michael Walkley.

RIM's BlackBerry still has a huge market share — nearly 20% of the worldwide smartphone market, second only to Nokia (NOK), according to Gartner — but Walkley's retail checks found some erosion in BlackBerry position last month.

The problem, according to Walkley, is that carriers like Verizon (VZ), Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (DT) have been soft-peddling the BlackBerries and promoting new devices from Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM).

In particular, Walkley's checks found that:

• BlackBerry Curve sales declined slightly at Sprint due to "solid sales" of the Palm Pre.
• Apple's new iPhone 3GS and the $99 price point for the old iPhone 3G "impacted" BlackBerry sales at AT&T (T), with June's numbers coming in below May's.
• Verizon ended its buy-one-get-one-free offer for BlackBerries last weekend and Walkley's checks indicate slightly slower BlackBerry sales and more action in the LG department, where Verizon started a similar promotion for their devices.

Walkley doesn't see consumer interest in the iPhone or Palm Pre going away any time soon, and he sees more competition coming down the road. In August, T-Mobile is scheduled to roll out the G2 — the latest phone based on Google's (GOOG) Android platform — and there are more smartphones due in the second half of '09 from LG, Nokia, Motorola (MOT) and Samsung.

The one bright spot in RIM's near future, says Walkley, is the launch of the BlackBerry Tour, due out later this month. He thinks it will do quite well.

"In fact," he writes, "we expect the Tour will sell very well to Verizon's installed BlackBerry subscriber base, as this is Verizon's first product that is competitive with the Bold at AT&T. Sales of the Tour are key in our opinion, as our checks indicated RIM may need strong July and August sales to meet its guidance."

If so, RIM cannot be pleased with the early review of the Tour that appeared Wednesday morning in Silicon Alley Insider.

"It's a solid gadget that any plastic-keyboard-addicted BlackBerry devotee should consider upgrading to. The screen and browser are especially nice compared to older BlackBerry models like the Curve," writes SAI's Dan Frommer. "But after a year on the iPhone, setting up a new BlackBerry was like figuring out a puzzle. It shouldn't have to be.

"Setting up email, for instance, was a 20-minute pain — versus a 2-minute breeze on the iPhone. If I weren't a relentless nerd, I would have had to contact customer service to figure it out, wasting Verizon's time and money."

It gets worse. To read Frommer's full review, click here.