Needham’s Charlie Wolf this morning cut his rating on Research In Motion (RIMM) to Underperform from Hold and cut his estimates on the company to reflect the growing threat from explosive sales of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3G.
“Sales of Apple’s iPhone 3G appear poised to blow through everyone’s forecasts,” Wolf wrote in a research note this morning. “While RIM’s dominance of the enterprise market appears secure, at least for now, the company’s great growth driver—the consumer market—is bound to come under siege because of the iPhone.”
Wolf says RIMM will counter with “new iPhone look-a-likes.” He says those models “have no hope of matching the secret sauce of the iPhone—the tight integration of hardware and software that creates a unique user experience. Nor do they have any chance of evolving into an application development platform like the iPhone.”
