Jobs Rips The Competition, Top RIM Executive Retaliates

The industry's ongoing fascination with tablet PCs has spurred a war of words between two top executives.

In Apple's fourth quarter earnings call Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs shot down the notion that a barrage of tablets from Apple's competitors would threaten Apple's iPad.

Jobs began by characterizing the coming wave of tablets as "just a handful of credible entrants, not exactly an avalanche," before disparaging the seven-inch tablet category at length as merely "tweeners, two big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.

"We think the current crop of seven-inch tablets are going to be DOA, Dead on Arrival," said Jobs, adding "Sounds like lots of fun ahead."

Though many will interpret this statement as confirmation that Apple will not pursue a 7-inch tablet as previously expected , Jobs has reversed himself in the past. In the past, Jobs went on record saying Apple would not develop a video version of the iPod and Apple had no interest in making phones.

Next: What The Competition Offers

Dell and Hewlett-Packard are among the OEMs scheduled to bring a WebOS tablet to market next year. In addition to Apple they will join Samsung, maker of the Galaxy [spelling] Tab, and Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, in the burgeoning mobile computing market.

RIM last month unveiled its PlayBook, a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 display tablet with a dual-core, 1 Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 processor more powerful than that in the iPad, Samsung's Galaxy Tab and other competitors.

Jobs specifically went after RIM, whose sales the iPhone surpassed this quarter, according to the figures in Apple's earnings call. "We've now passed RIM, and I don't see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future," Jobs said.

Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at RIM responded to Jobs' laundry list of attacks on Tuesday with a statement that accused Apple of something between marketing and lying. "For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7’ tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real Web experience," Balsillie said.

Responding to Jobs' point that the Android platform is too fragmented, Balsillie said developers wanted more options than Apple is willing to give them. Though Jobs touted his company's ability to manufacture their own hardware as well as their own software, Balsillie turned the argument around, casting Apple as the industry's overreaching villain.

Next: The Argument Point-By-Point

"Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple," Bataille said, adding "We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple."

Jobs cited one of Apple's principle advantages in the broader mobile space to discredit the new competitors' tablets -- the more than 35,000 apps available to iPad users in the App Store. "This new crop of tablets will have near zero," he said.

Balsillie countered by pointing to the oft-cited Achilles heel of Apple devices: the lack of Adobe Flash support. Though it may only be one application, Balsillie pointed to its widespread usage in a number of other platforms as the part of the truth which Jobs intentionally left out of his rant.

Finally, Jobs said Apple's potential competitors would struggle to compete with the pricing of the iPad, despite the smaller form factor of the 7-inch offerings. He explained Apple's advantage in this area as the direct result of building its own A4 processor, along with its own software, battery chemistry and enclosure.

Next: The Last Word

Balsillie quibbled with Apple's earnings estimate for the third quarter, citing increased industry demand during the back-to-school season in September and claiming that Apple's Q4 results had been padded by leftover orders and unfulfilled customer demand from Q3.

He concluded by reiterating the accusation of distortion and dominion.

"Sooner or later," said Balsillie, "even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story."