Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO at Research In Motion, had some positive things to say about the iPhone and then suggested Apple will have a tough time selling outside of their customer base.

"What the iPhone does is make smart phones mainstream. It's raising all the boats in the harbor. People are now saying smart phones are the wave of the future. BlackBerrys are at the core of that," he said. Lazaridis believes the iPhone will sell well within Apple's loyal fan base, but will have a tough time crossing over to other consumers who demand QUERTY style keyboards. "The industry has shown that well-designed tactile keyboards are the standard; that's what people prefer," said Lazaridis.

Lazaridis found time to talk about the iPhone while RIM continues work on outages that affected 5 million users.

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Thanks SFGate!