Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive and field general, has Napoleonic dreams of global conquest for his 10-month-old wonder gadget, the iPhone. So it may be fitting that he has encountering his most serious resistance in a city called Waterloo.

That is where, 110 kilometers, or 70 miles west of Toronto, 19 nondescript, low-rise office buildings constitute the headquarters of Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry.

RIM is the North American leader in building smartphones, those versatile handsets that operate more like computers than phones. But RIM may have trouble dominating the market's next phase. Once the exclusive domain of e-mail-obsessed professionals, smartphones are now prized by consumers who want easy access to the Web, digital music and video even more than an omnipresent connection to their in-boxes.

Since the iPhone went on sale last summer, amid long lines of shoppers and media adulation, the contours of the smartphone market have begun to shift rapidly toward consumers. An industry once characterized by brain-numbing acronyms and droning discussions about enterprise security is now defined by buzz around handset design, video games and mobile social networks.

International Herald Tribune: Business with Reuters, “RIM fights to keep its edge on smartphones”, International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/27/business/RIM.php (accessed on 10 May, 2008)