Even as Windows Phone has emerged from the Dark Ages, there's still a gaping chasm between BlackBerry and consumers, which RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis makes clear as he warns that people's phones need to use less of them internets.

"Manufacturers had better start building more efficient applications and more efficient services. There is no real way to get around this."

"If we don't start conserving that bandwidth, in the next few years we are going to run into a capacity crunch. You are already experiencing the capacity crunch in the United States."

"That is pretty fundamental to a carrier as that means you can have three paying Blackberry browsing customers for every one other customer."

"That has a huge advantage for the carriers if you think about the many billions of dollars the carriers have invested over the last five years in spectrum auctions and infrastructure rollouts."

Worrying more about carriers than people? You sound like AT&T.

Guess what? People want to do stuff with their phone, cool stuff like stream TV, download photos, upload a video of that crazy homeless guy saying crazy things in that crazy part of town. You know, the wonderfully awesome and connected future carriers have promised for years in pretty promos. There is no going back.

Fake Steve pretty much nailed it a few months ago, when AT&T was talking incentivizing people to use less data:

We've got people who love this goddamn phone so much that they're living on it. Yes, that's crushing your network. Yes, 3% of your users are taking up 40% of your bandwidth. You see this as a bad thing. It's not. It's a good thing. It's a blessing. It's an indication that people love what we're doing, which means you now have a reason to go out and double or triple or quadruple your damn network capacity. Jesus! I can't believe I'm explaining this to you. You're in the business of selling bandwidth. That pipe is what you sell. Right now what the market is telling you is that you can sell even more! Lots more! Good Lord. The world is changing, and you're right in the sweet spot.

Why would you even think about giving that up? Because carriers will like you more? RIM's bread-and-butter is corporate dollars, but you know what, so was Windows Mobile's. Keep thinking that way, and see how far it gets you. [Economic Times via 9to5Mac]