Posts
There's been considerable legacy investment by enterprises in Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry platform, and rightfully so. But the tide is changing, quickly, and companies need to reevaluate their investment in the RIMM platform as they increase their investment in enterprise mobility.
RIMM did a bang up job early on of introducing seamless, secure, enterprise mobile communication, but they have failed to address 3 big movements in the market in the last few years:
1) Consumer Adoption of Smart Phones/Enterprise's Bring Your Own Tech (BYOT) Programs
Smart phones are set to eclipse feature/basic phone purchases this year. With Google giving Android away for free, phone manufacturers like HTC, LG and Samsung can introduce smart phones at an extremely competitive price, to the point where carriers offer them for free for new/renewed contracts. This trend combined with Verizon's iPhone launch and ATT's recent $49 iPhone 3GS plan, makes smart phones primed to become, well, phones.
This adoption has lead to knowledge workers pushing for support of iOS and Android platforms on their corporate networks. Many enterprises are supporting this through BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) programs; whereby instead of purchasing phones or plans, companies provide a stipend to employees for their own device purchase and usage. This is not good for BlackBerry. Why? Take a look at the last 5 months of Mobile OS Stats.
Couple that with RIMM's recent lowered guidance on 2011 numbers and analysts agreement that there is no where to go but down.
2) The Introduction of Mobile Device Management Platforms
Mobile Device Management Platforms (MDM's) are replacing the need for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Companies like MobileIron and McAfee's Trust Digital offer the same capabilities with additional functionality like remote wiping, mandatory OS and app updates and secure tunnels into the enterprise across all major smartphone platforms.
3) Advancement in Other Mobile Operating Systems and Mobile App Platforms
Let's face it, BlackBerry's OS is behind. It's slow, clunky and hard to use in comparison to iOS and Android. It's app development SDK is immature in comparison, it's upgrade paths are horrific, and it's App World model is unrefined. Thus, app developers (enterprise and independent) have flocked to Apple and Android's App Platforms. This is evident in the number of apps in the various app app stores. Apple/iOS roughly 350,000, Android roughly 100,000 and BlackBerry roughly 10,000. That's an order of magnitude difference. BlackBerry's recent news that their new tablet will support Android apps (kind of) is about as symbolic of a white flag as you can get.
Where's It All Going?
Is RIMM going away? Not right away. But the OS (and Apps) running on BlackBerries most likely will be going away. As a comparison, Nokia, who has the most popular smart phone platform in Europe and Asia, called Symbian, recently announced they will be embracing Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS going forward. They recognized that Symbian, despite it's current market share, was too far behind the other smart phone OS's. They also recognized that at the end of the day, Nokia is a device manufacturer, not a software company. BlackBerry should/will do the same thing. I would anticipate BlackBerry phones running on Android or Windows Phone in the next 12 months. If RIMM doesn't make that shift soon, then they will be going away.
As you look to refine your mobility strategy, consider the points above. Most enterprises are starting down the trail of mobile app development, not just externally, but internally, and that means they need to pick the OSs they're going to develop on. So we're not just talking about phone purchases anymore, we're talking about software capital investment. Be sure you're building on a platform of the future, not the past.
-J
J Schwan is the VP of Product Development for Solstice Consulting. His team helps companies with mobility strategy, MDM selection and mobile app development.
RIMM did a bang up job early on of introducing seamless, secure, enterprise mobile communication, but they have failed to address 3 big movements in the market in the last few years:
1) Consumer Adoption of Smart Phones/Enterprise's Bring Your Own Tech (BYOT) Programs
Smart phones are set to eclipse feature/basic phone purchases this year. With Google giving Android away for free, phone manufacturers like HTC, LG and Samsung can introduce smart phones at an extremely competitive price, to the point where carriers offer them for free for new/renewed contracts. This trend combined with Verizon's iPhone launch and ATT's recent $49 iPhone 3GS plan, makes smart phones primed to become, well, phones.
This adoption has lead to knowledge workers pushing for support of iOS and Android platforms on their corporate networks. Many enterprises are supporting this through BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) programs; whereby instead of purchasing phones or plans, companies provide a stipend to employees for their own device purchase and usage. This is not good for BlackBerry. Why? Take a look at the last 5 months of Mobile OS Stats.
2) The Introduction of Mobile Device Management Platforms
Mobile Device Management Platforms (MDM's) are replacing the need for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Companies like MobileIron and McAfee's Trust Digital offer the same capabilities with additional functionality like remote wiping, mandatory OS and app updates and secure tunnels into the enterprise across all major smartphone platforms.
3) Advancement in Other Mobile Operating Systems and Mobile App Platforms
Let's face it, BlackBerry's OS is behind. It's slow, clunky and hard to use in comparison to iOS and Android. It's app development SDK is immature in comparison, it's upgrade paths are horrific, and it's App World model is unrefined. Thus, app developers (enterprise and independent) have flocked to Apple and Android's App Platforms. This is evident in the number of apps in the various app app stores. Apple/iOS roughly 350,000, Android roughly 100,000 and BlackBerry roughly 10,000. That's an order of magnitude difference. BlackBerry's recent news that their new tablet will support Android apps (kind of) is about as symbolic of a white flag as you can get.
Where's It All Going?
Is RIMM going away? Not right away. But the OS (and Apps) running on BlackBerries most likely will be going away. As a comparison, Nokia, who has the most popular smart phone platform in Europe and Asia, called Symbian, recently announced they will be embracing Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS going forward. They recognized that Symbian, despite it's current market share, was too far behind the other smart phone OS's. They also recognized that at the end of the day, Nokia is a device manufacturer, not a software company. BlackBerry should/will do the same thing. I would anticipate BlackBerry phones running on Android or Windows Phone in the next 12 months. If RIMM doesn't make that shift soon, then they will be going away.
As you look to refine your mobility strategy, consider the points above. Most enterprises are starting down the trail of mobile app development, not just externally, but internally, and that means they need to pick the OSs they're going to develop on. So we're not just talking about phone purchases anymore, we're talking about software capital investment. Be sure you're building on a platform of the future, not the past.
-J
J Schwan is the VP of Product Development for Solstice Consulting. His team helps companies with mobility strategy, MDM selection and mobile app development.
