Apple and Microsoft make life difficult for Canadian companies: RIM, Bell, Rogers to see major competition

Apple and Microsoft make life difficult for Canadian companies: RIM, Bell, Rogers to see major competition

It’s a big week for the tech world, as the combination of Apple’s WWDC and the wider-reaching E3 conference start the summer with tech and game nerdvana. Each conference promises to enlighten us all with the promise of a gadget paradise to come, but naturally, not until pre-Christmas 2011. The bad news with some of these announcements is that the new products and services put Canadian companies in a bind.

Take Research in Motion, the creators of the BlackBerry. One of the new features that Apple introduced yesterday was a revamped messaging app that is pretty clearly aimed at the uber-popular BlackBerry Messenger. Apple still hasn’t cornered the market on business IT the way RIM has, but according to the National Post, the market was impressed.

Meanwhile, for businesses that are a lot less sympathetic in our eyes, Bell and Rogers have a new set of problems. While the CRTC debates what to do about monthly bandwidth caps, Microsoft and Apple both released a slew of new features for their systems that are likely to make everyone “bandwidth hogs,” in the lingo of the industry. Apple’s iCloud service will move music playing to online servers, and Xbox 360 owners may eventually get live TV streamed to their game boxes (no word on when that would launch in Canada). Both services are going to run up against Canadian Internet service providers’ bandwidth caps pretty quickly, which leaves Bell and Rogers with an unenviable choice: deal with more consumer outrage like they faced this winter, or watch as customers abandon them for independent ISPs who don’t have ludicrous caps. That or they continue the slow backtrack on this idea of theirs and accept that the industry is changing. Crazy talk, we know.

Microsoft expands Kinect, adds TV to Xbox in U.S. [Globe and Mail]
Move Over RIM, iOS 5 and iCloud Just Took Your Market [PC World]
Wall Street sees Cult of Mac growing stronger, RIM reeling [National Post]