Enterprise Dumps RIM for iPhone

A new study released by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) reveals a striking, if not predictable new trend. Blackberry users are jumping ship for the iPhone. Blackberry, and it’s manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) have been suffering many well publicized battles with their own infrastructure recently. As the leading provider of enterprise mobile communications devices, CIO’s have relied on RIM’s leadership in enterprise features. Most notably, Blackberry devices were the first, and for a long time, only option that met minimum enterprise security standards. With development of new server side encryption standards from MS Exchange and others, iPhone, Android, and other mobile OS devices now fall under the compliance threshold. All users needed was a single shot to begin the race to iPhone. Already this month, they have 2.

On Monday the 3^rd of this month, Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) experienced an outage that lasted more than a week for some users. The outage affected web traffic, email, and BBM (an instant messaging service). The outage was similar to one in 2009, and users in 5 continents were inconvenienced. East coast users had experienced some outage during this summer’s minor earthquake centered in Virginia. With Steve Jobs passing away two days after the start of the most recent outage, and the new iPhone 4s barely touching the display cases at apple stores a week later, the media storm surrounding Apple’s unimpeachable engineering dominance put pressure on enterprise IT to prepare for the inevitable.

The EMA survey released today (Oct 20^th) showed RIM’s old over enterprise users (52%) was expected to fall sharply. Most tantalizingly, of those blackberry users surveyed, only 16% reported that they were “completely satisfied” with their device, compared to 44% of iPhone users.

The outage was not all that was ailing Blackberry after all. A paltry apps store wore away at users enamored by the healthy development community surrounding iOS and Android. Critical mass in the development community never materialized for RIM. They had long been seen by app developers as a platform of the past. As it was with Palm, the end of an era for mobile devices is fast approaching. They will be missed, but say, have you seen the Siri app yet?

Ted Hughes

Managing Director

OCC Service Incorporated

tedhughes@occaustin.com