Sometimes, when one company gets a lot of attention with a hot new device, like the iPhone, the rising tide floats the boats of the other competitors. The concept is called coopetition, but the question is whether RIM can actually exploit that effect with the BlackBerry, according to the Motley Fool.

Canon approached Hewlett Packard about sharing their inkjet technology so that both companies could win. Netflix has, publicly, welcomed Blockbuster’s entry into mail-delivery movies, calling it a win for both. Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff in a 1995 Harvard Business Review article "The Right Game: Use Game Theory to Shape Strategy," explained coopetition as "looking for win-win as well as win-lose opportunities."

While executives often put spin on their competitive position when another company grabs the public eye, it’s true that the buzz surrounding a technology can help both companies in a non zero-sum game. As a result, RIM has been making some assertions about how the Apple iPhone can only help the BlackBerry.

"I think they [Apple] did us a great favor because they drove attention to the converged appliance base [smartphones, PDAs, etc.]," said RIM CEO Jim Balsille. He added: "iPhone is launching, to the best of my knowledge, in one carrier and one country. And we’re in about 100 countries and 300 carriers, so to the extent there is interest there, there are another 99 countries that are interested in these kinds of things."

There are problems, however, with RIM’s public posture. Apple won’t be standing still. All the attention is on Apple. RIM only has a short window in time to measure up to the iPhone design or face serious image problems. Apple could expand into, say, Best Buy, and expand the device as a platform and its capabilities faster than competitors, [thanks to Mac OS X in the iPhone.]

The author, Jeremy MacNealy, sees the iPhone as a serious threat to the BlackBerry, despite the coopetition factor, and, despite RIM’s temporary happiness with the rising tide of smartphones, they’re going to have to react very quickly to avoid becoming the victim of obsolescence in very new kind of race.