Is BlackBerry’s Business Reign Over?

A few years ago, I was convinced that RIM’s BlackBerry could never become a consumer-friendly device. I was wrong. But I’m not sure, now, how much good it will do the platform.

Right now, RIM should be sitting pretty. Yet, in the poll we are running this week on eWEEK Europe, the company’s BlackBerry devices are not so far getting a resounding endorsement.

It should be going well now. The company had a solid hold on corporate email, with many workers tied to their BlackBerries; then in 2006, it successfully established itself in consumer pockets, with the 8100 Pearl. Adding a camera and a media player, it did away with RIM’s staid image, and I quickly saw my friends adopting Blackberry devices from choice.

Why BlackBerry ought to win

The iPhone appeared in 2007, and got a consumer smartphone boom going, and this has created several factors which ought to conspire in RIM’s favour.

Firstly, consumer phones are increasingly being used in the office. That’s something the iPhone has spearheaded, but RIM’s consumer devices should still have enough enterprise cachet, to get a leg up over other platforms. Around six percent of eWEEK readers want a BlackBerry Torch outside the office, according to a recent poll (and it got good reviews).

Secondly, the last few years have seen a boom in mobile email, with consumers in all walks of life expecting to do email wherever they are – even including Biffa’s bin men and police officers! People may not want to rub shoulders with dustbin collectors, but that sort of penetration, and the rise of mobile data, ought to be a positive blow for BlackBerry.

Despite this, it is predicted that Android will overtake both RIM and iPhone, and we find that – at the time of writing, in the early stages of our poll – fewer than half of eWEEK’s readers have any time for BlackBerry. A few people are even prepared to say that a Microsoft operating system (Windows Phone 7) has overtaken BlackBerry. No-one but Steve Ballmer would have said it six months ago, but now even Stephen Fry likes Windows Phone 7.

It’s all about a mix of clients?

In the face of this, RIM seems to have a strange mix of defensiveness and isolation. Last week, when I spoke to David Heit, director of product strategy at RIM, he spent some time telling me that RIM devices are no longer enterprise-only – even though he was preaching to the converted. I’ve known that since the Pearl launch.

He then reminded me that, whatever happens to its share of the sector, smartphones are growing at such a rate that RIM is still expanding, with more than 25 million users.

Finally, he said that integrating phones into a corporate network can still be a complicated business, involving business email servers and PBX systems, and told me RIM has expertise there. Well, sure, but so do other people.

RIM’s contribution to a variety of end-user devices is to bring in a very promising tablet, the PlayBook, which looks like being a much more interesting device for business use than Apple’s iPad.

Heit seemed surprised that we in the UK find the PlayBook name strange. I suppose it’s not unexpected after the “BlackBerry”, but apparently for US people “playbook” means a gameplan used in American football.

Heit seemed surprised that not everyone in the world had heard the term before – and I take that as a sign that BlackBerry’s market research is a bit cut-off from its potential customers.

It’s a small sign, but RIM can’t afford to be that inward looking as enterprise mobile devices become ever more competitive.