The changing face of BlackBerry
One of the great BlackBerry debates of the moment seems to be based around
RIM's intentions to add more consumer friendly features to the BlackBerry
handheld. Traditionally BlackBerry handhelds have never had cameras or
expandable memory. This always pleased the big corporates who slept easy
knowing their users could never take those sensitive documents off site or
take some sly pictures of industrial blueprints only to see them appear on
every rumor site and related blog on the internet the next day.
So is this a shift in the BlackBerry trend, and will those corporates pick up and
take their mobile communication needs somewhere else with the introduction of the
media BlackBerry? Well no and no!! This is not a change in trend, merely an
expansion of the model, and this expansion has happened for two key reasons.
The first reason is a reactive one and is based upon Microsofts’ entrance in to
the email mobility market. It's taken the sale of four and a half million BlackBerry
handhelds to get Microsoft to sit up and say "we need a piece of this" but now they've
made that decision, they've thrown everything they have at their disposal at trying to
get it to work as well as BlackBerry, and following it up with an aggressive marketing
campaign. It’s fair to say they've bought a good solution to the table.
Unlike BlackBerry it requires no middleware so is more cost effective server side,
but the devices are significantly more expensive than the equivalent BlackBerry handheld,
are more complicated for non technical users and take a lot of support which is why those
big corporates will remain loyal to their BlackBerry handhelds.
One thing however which the Windows devices do have are multimedia rich applications.
This puts RIM a little bit in the middle, because they don't want to upset their big
corporates, but at the same time there are plenty of SME businesses where bringing a
camera phone to work is no great security risk. There is also another market where the
Windows device would herald its biggest triumph and is also the second reason for RIM
breaking the mould - consumers.
It seems as consumers we're more technically savvy than we used to be.
Having an email address is as common as having a mobile phone now, and more
individuals than ever find they need mobile access to email. These people want
to converge personal and work lives on their devices and media rich handhelds are
a must to dominate this market sector.
So what have RIM done and what are they going to do? Well they have issued
a number of patents to the USPTO for "image related apparatus" whatever that may be,
as patents often make little sense of describing any kind of finished product design
and mostly consist of legally descriptive jargon to keep you out of court should you
chose to build your design - it's safe to say RIM have learned the $640 million way to
word their patents carefully! It's also safe to say they are working on beta models of
devices which we can expect to see in the later part of this year. What do these devices
look like well we don't yet know, but even if we did we couldn't disclose any information
on them yet due to strict Non Disclosure Agreements RIM enforce.
Code model names including the 'Stealth' have surfaced on the internet and you
could read in to it what you will, the likelihood is they're pretty accurate.
Rumours have also surfaced claiming that RIM is about to change the way it names
its devices. In the past all device names have been numeric (8700, 7130 and the like)
but apparently RIM intends to actually name its devices, so what we believe are code names
(such as the ‘Stealth’) could actually be finished product names.
This too makes the device that little bit more consumer friendly and would
stand out from any PDA or mobile phone as most manufacturers go by a model number.
BlackBerry is about to become more of a product of choice depending on
who you are and what you want to do besides email and voice. Consumer devices
packed with cameras and expandable memory will sit alongside traditional models
giving companies the choice of the added security and consumers the choice of having
a product for both their work and personal uses. This keeps both sides happy and helps
to ensure those quarterly figures keep going up for RIM.
If you’re a company running a BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) expect to
see enhanced IT Policies that could lock out camera features on BlackBerry
handhelds. This is not as complicated to implement as you would think.
IT Policies on BES servers already incorporate features which can lock down
the ability to browse the internet, send PIN messages, even prevent you
from making phone calls on any device you wish, so a policy to prevent camera
use would be no great feat to reach for RIM. Think a little harder and if there
was a RIM device released with a camera and expandable memory, your company could
have a policy set on their BES server which allows the camera feature but prevents
data being exported to the external memory, or locks down certain file extensions.
Looking even harder at it there’s little doubt that if your company did allow data
to be exported to an external memory card, the BES could log the date, time, name
of the file, file size and just about anything else to do with the transfer of a
file for audit purposes. This may sound surprising but it’s already possible to
log phone calls, PIN messaging and even SMS messages sent from a BlackBerry handheld.
So we can conclude from this that even if a company decided to allow media rich
BlackBerry handhelds, they could still retain a massive amount of control over them.
To conclude, what RIM are doing now will only extend the ability and attraction of BlackBerry to more companies and more individuals than ever before, which is exactly what most people had hoped for when they faced competition from organizations like Microsoft. So many people commonly ask “so who will win, is Microsoft going to dominate mobile email?” The short answer is no, because RIM already have a massive presence with many years of specialized experience in email mobility and a lot of brand presence in terms of the BlackBerry name. It’s a reliable solution which millions have used for some years now, currently in its sixth incarnation of the server platform. Microsoft will catch up, have no doubt, but none of this really matters as the market for mobile email is so huge that there's room enough for everyone. The biggest bonus of all is that competition only helps to ensure that those companies offering these solutions are pushing the envelopes of the technology which is great for networks, developers, resellers, support companies and ultimately, end users who are the bread and butter of it all.
Adam Phones are fully licensed Service Providers for both Vodafone and O2