The article I would like to critique is “RIM Profit falls below estimates.” I found this article to contain lots of interesting information, as well as useful financial statistics about the company Research in Motion, and its competitors. This company is the producer of the original Smartphone, the Blackberry. However, I disagree that RIM is a member of an oligopoly market with Apple and Google. I disagree with this, not only because it’s illegal in the United States, but also because they do not sell similar products.
It is true that they sell smart phones and while they share similar features, the software, hardware, functions, and features are vastly different. This seems to be a monopolistically competitive market to me. When an oligopoly occurs it is among firms that sell products that are much more similar such as food, cigarettes, and oil. Also, because of the nature of oligopolies, collusion and price setting tends to occur among the firms. I am no expert in the inside dealings of RIM, Apple, and Google, but I see no reason for Apple, the leading firm in Smartphone technology, to collude with RIM, who is currently falling behind in Smartphone sales.
While I disagree that these firms make up an oligopoly, I felt that this article was very appropriate considering the number of Smartphone users and the impacts that these companies may have on consumers as well as stockholders. I found it very interesting that even though RIM made the original Smartphone, they have fallen behind competitors who entered the market late. The volume of sales apple made with their ipad also surprised me. 3.27 million in the first quarter is a huge amount of revenue. I found this so surprising because other companies have produced similar sized products long before apple decided to produce the ipad. The fact that apple was able to sell so many suggests that their customers have an overwhelming since of brand loyalty. Not only was apple able to create an entirely different market focused around the portable tablet, they were able to create demand from their current Apple computer and smartphone customers. While their closest competitor, Google, may have recently sold more units of Smartphones than apple, no one has come close in the portable tablet market.
AUSTEN, IAN. "RIM Profit Falls Below Estimates - NYTimes.com." NY Times Advertisement. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 June 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/technology/17rimm.html?_r=1&ref=business>.
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