Michael Koby

This week’s video blog looks at the discussion and obcession people have with the iPhone vs. BlackBerry in the enterprise market.  I’m still on my digital camera for these but the purchase of some kind of web cam is in the works.  If anyone has any recommendations on web cams, I’m all ears so leave a comment or email me.

Last week the website, MacDaily News, posted an article entitled, RIM’s BlackBerry 9000 Shows How Little They’ve Learned from Apple’s iPhone and proves that in a world where anyone can have an opinion, an uneducated opinion can really do a lot of harm.

You see the fact of the matter is, the iPhone is cool.  Everyone knows it and a lot of companies (like LG in particular) are working to catch up with the cool factor that has been generated by the iPhone.  The problem is, there is more to a phone than the cool factor.  There is adoption, there is the question of market, and there will always be the question of who’s next.  MacDaily News is incredibly quick to point out how lame the new BlackBerry 9000 is and how much it doesn’t improve on the existing product.  Fair enough, there is not a ton of innovation between the BlackBerry 8800 to the 9000 to warrant a jaw drop.  Also, they really focus on the saying things like:

"…but has not of the multi-touch goodness of the iPhone" and "It’s the same old, same old in an iPhone-inspired wrapper"

Maybe it is just me but I do not see this "iPhone-inspired wrapper" they speak of.  In fact I see something that is more in line with RIM’s previous offers than with the iPhone.  But RIM has a different market focus than Apple when it comes to mobile devices.

Research In Motion’s market?  The enterprise first and foremost.  Don’t believe, then just look at the fact that in almost every new BlackBerry release, it goes to the business side of provider first and the consumer side second.  The iPhone’s market?  Consumers and most specifically a younger generation of consumers at that.  Ask any older person what they want in a phone and more often than not you will hear, "I want to be able to make phone calls.  Taking a picture would be cool, but its not a requirement" and this is not Apple’s market.  The older generation could care less about the flashy interface of a device when it comes to actual use.  Sure they might say "wow that’s nifty" or have their eyes grow wide in awe of something new, but overall they don’t need it to live their daily lives.

So if Apple’s market is not the older generation (the large percentage of which controls/makes decisions in the enterprise world), Apple is not going to be selling to those folks.  Enterprise people want a phone that works and does what they need it to do.  The BlackBerry devices do that.  They work and they do it on an existing infrastructure that IT departments have spent years laying down.  The iPhone is not going to replace RIM in the enterprise anytime soon.  Enterprise folk are not looking to RIM to come out with an iPhone killer.  In fact most of them could care less as many of them are still on previous generation BlackBerry phones like the 8700.

Secondly, a touch screen is not everything.  In fact, every person that I know that has a touch screen device says the same thing with they pick up my Curve and use the trackball, "oooh, I like the trackball." or "wow this is a nice phone" so apparently a touch screen isn’t everything.  Multi-touch is a cool innovation and Apple should be commended for it as it really changes the way people interact with their phones and other devices.  But multi-touch is not going to completely replace existing navigation technologies.

Last but not least, MacDaily News needs to get a serious clue and stop drinking the Apple kool-aid.  I mean yes, Apple came out with some really cool stuff when it unleashed the iPhone on the masses but seriously, I have never read an article with so much fan-boyism in it.  Read up on technology, work in an enterprise IT, or something before you go off on things you apparently do not understand.  Nokia is not going anywhere, they allow interchangeable SIM cards, they offer some pretty nifty smartphone devices (not to mention they developed some of the first smart devices), and they’ve been on the 3G bandwagon for about as long as anyone can remember.  Microsoft is not going anywhere either.  They have market share and they continue to improve their mobile OS with each iteration.  I do not know how long LG will last, but as long as people need cheap devices, we’ll see a lot of them.  Seriously, the people at MacDaily News need to come out of the Apple induced haze and read up on other technologies because it’s articles like the one I linked to that really prove that some people really just have no idea what they are talking about.

Earlier today I posted an article that talked about why the iPhone, with its new enterprise features and development kit, was not a threat to Research In Motion and their BlackBerry devices.  You can read the article entitled, iPhone NOT a Threat to RIM.

I wrote that article before this past weekend which saw some interesting developments occur surround the iPhone’s SDK.  For starters, the SDK is extremely limited.  One main downside is that applications developed by third parties can not run in the background and are required by the SDK’s terms of service to completely exit out.  This includes when the phone rings while in an application.  Also, third party applications are limited in how they can write data to the device in that they can only write to their allocated space.  Access to the rest of the device is cut off.

These are just two of the main flaws in the SDK.  If you would like a more complete list, read iPhone Developer Program is a Joke by Zac Bowling.  In this article there is a list of the limitations placed on third party developers.

Also, over the weekend thousands of people received letters from the developer program stating basically “thanks, but no thanks” in regards to their iPhone Development applications.  This is the application to get your application into the Apps Store on the iPhone and iPod Touch.  So basically, Apple is being selective on who they are accepting into the store as well.

Both of these issues further prove that RIM and BlackBerry devices have little to fear from the iPhone’s third party development abilities.  The ability to connect to Microsoft Exchange email servers will certainly cause a small increase in the number of users but I think that it will be marginal at best.

Let me preface this article by letting everyone know that in my house, my wife and I both own BlackBerry devices (her the Pearl and the Curve for myself).  I have used an iPhone, played with several, and have had the privilege of using jail-broken iPhone.  I think the iPhone is a nifty device, but not the end all be all.  The iPhone has caused carriers to rethink their device strategies and I am thankful for that.  Now on to the article…

In the past week, I have read several articles that have said pretty much the same thing.  That "thing" is that the iPhone is going to be a serious threat to RIM in terms of market share now that the iPhone has Exchange functionality and and development kit that will give it third party application support.  Let me make this plain and simple the iPhone will NOT be a serious threat to RIM and I will explain why.

The Main Reason

The main reason that the iPhone is not going to take much more market share away from RIM is quite simply RIM already has an install base in the enterprise.  The fact is, IT departments do not do well with change.  They are not going to redo an entire infrastructure just because the iPhone now has Exchange support.  On top of that, through RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), administrators can control the nitty-gritty of what is allowed and not allowed on their company BlackBerry devices.  Finally, last but not least, the iPhone is a consumer device.  It was built with consumers, not the enterprise in mind.

Quite simply IT administrators are going to want to limit the phone to do what they think their employees should be allowed to do.  I find it difficult to believe that IT departments the world over are going to jump at letting their employees place music and video on enterprise phones.  Yes, you can do this with the BlackBerry but an IT admin can disable the Media Player on newer BlackBerry devices from BES.  Also BlackBerry devices built with the enterprise in mind (BlackBerry 8800 series) do not have media functions on the device at all (BlackBerry 8800 does not even have a camera).

What Could Hurt RIM

Now, RIM has not been doing so well lately.  In fact, there have been a couple of outages in the past year that have left a sour taste in several users’ mouths.  However, several of these people are not in a hurry to switch from their BlackBerrys to something else.  I think a major reason for the outage is RIM’s new consumer focus.  They have released two consumer pointed devices in the past year or so, and so more non-enterprise folks are using a BlackBerry.  I do not think Research in Motion was prepared for this.

Though, if RIM does not get a handle on their problem soon, it could spell disaster for them.  That’s a little too "doom and gloom" actually, realistically people will just start looking at other options.  Research In Motion needs to really focus on their infrastructure if they hope to maintain a competitive edge in the enterprise.

The Future

I think that it is great that Apple is really trying to give customers what they want.  Support for Microsoft’s Exchange Server and other enterprise features, as well as a development kit is really going to give the iPhone the groundwork to become a driving force in mobile.  Apple has a solid device but even with the new features I would not expect to see it in the enterprise on a massive scale for a couple of more years (2 at least).

This gives the folks at RIM some time to come out with new devices that can compete with the iPhone’s "wow factor" and if early patents are any indication, they are not sitting on their hands.  I expect that we will see some form of a touchscreen device (with a tactile keyboard of course) from RIM this year.  So please folks, stop saying that the iPhone is going to take market share from BlackBerrys in the enterprise.  It may happen, but its not happening this June.