Blackberry vs. iPhone smackdown

The cover story on the August 31, 2009 issue of Fortune asks the question "Blackberry vs. iPhone, whose side are you on?"

In it a piece by Jessi Hempel takes a closer look at the braintrust of RIM, co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie and their plan to keep the iPhone in their rear-view mirror:

RIM has a commanding 56% share of the $12 billion U.S. smartphone market. And its sales are still accelerating... the bestselling smartphone in the U.S. so far this year by units is not the iPhone but the BlackBerry Curve.

Thanks to those booming sales, Research in Motion ranks No. 1 on Fortune's 2009 list of Fastest-Growing Companies... Apple, which is three times the size of RIM in both sales and market value, checks in at No. 39.

As much as that may be true, Apple is making inroads on RIMs bread-and-butter enterprise market, albeit mostly at the expense of Palm:

According to ChangeWave Research, as of May Apple had 20% of the enterprise market, up from 6% just a year ago. (Much of the gain came at the expense of Palm's Treo.) Over the same period RIM's share dipped slightly from 76% to 74%.

The piece is a good read.

So, if you had to pick between the two:

[poll="187"]