iPhone, Schmyphone; BlackBerry Maker RIM's On A Roll

Tony Greenberg knows cell phones. The chief executive of outsourcing firm RampRate consumes more than 7,000 cell phone minutes a month. Ten cell phones, most of them retired, are on his desk.

But he has a clear favorite: the BlackBerry Curve from Research In Motion , which debuted May 31. He owns two.

"It's the best phone I've ever had," Greenberg said.

Step aside, Apple (NasdaqGS:AAPL - News).

The Curve is the latest hit for RIM, which late Thursday released fiscal first-quarter results that blew the doors off analyst estimates. That's for a quarter that ended June 2, so the Curve wasn't yet a factor.

For the current quarter, RIM said it expects sales of $1.3 billion to $1.37 billion. The midpoint 15uld more than double the company's sales in the year-earlier quarter. That would be its highest year-over-year revenue jump since 2004.

RIM forecast profit of $1.37 to $1.49 per share for this quarter. That's 20 cents to 32 cents more than many analysts were expecting, including Rob Sanderson of American Technology Research.

The company also announced a 3-for-1 split.

Even as lines snaked for blocks at stores waiting to sell the first Apple iPhones late Friday, investors responded to RIM's report. Its shares soared 34.40, or 21%, to an all-time high just shy of 200, on almost five times average volume.

"RIM shattered investor concerns" that expectations might have been too high, wrote Sanderson in a Friday report.

In a conference call with analysts late Thursday, RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie showed no fear of his new rival.

"I think (Apple) did us a great favor," Balsillie said, "because they drove attention to the converged appliance base."

The "converged appliance" is better known as a smart phone, high-end cell phones that do much more than just send and receive phone calls. They can be used for e-mail, scheduling, Web surfing, note taking, sending and receiving large file documents, photography, and to play music, video and games.

The Apple iPhone is the newest entrant to this growing market. It's much anticipated because it includes an Apple iPod music player and is designed by a company known for designing hot products.

Balsillie shrugs.

"The iPhone is launching with one carrier (AT&T (NYSE:T - News) is the exclusive carrier) in one country (the U.S.), and we're in about 100 countries and 300 carriers," he said.

Apple is entering a market RIM helped pioneer.

In-Stat analyst Bill Hughes says he first heard of RIM in the early 1990s, when it was developing some of the first handheld devices that worked on data networks. "And even then, their products were impressive," Hughes said.

The smart phone market, though comprising barely 10% of total cell phone unit shipments last year, is important to phone makers and service providers.

Average revenue per customer for smart phone users is $75 a month vs. less than $50 for the others, says Hughes. In-Stat says corporate spending on wireless services will exceed what they spend on landline services by 2010.

For its first quarter, RIM reported per-share profit of $1.17, 11 cents above the consensus estimate of 28 analysts polled by Thomson Financial. That's up 74% from the year-earlier quarter.

Sales rose 76% to $1.08 billion.

RIM added 1.2 million BlackBerry subscribers, above forecasts and 18% higher than the prior quarter. It expects to sell its 20 millionth BlackBerry this summer.

"There has never been a unit opportunity as massive as the cell phone market, which is at the beginning of a disruptive shift toward RIM's market-leading strengths," Sanderson wrote.

At least three investment banks raised their ratings on RIM shares on Friday.