RIM Recognizes That iPhone Exists
Tacit recognition that Android and Apple have made significant inroads into BlackBerry’s once dominant hold on the business market came in today’s press release issued by Research In Motion.
RIM announced that they are rolling out a new system targeted at its Corporate clients; whose employee’s are no longer 100% BlackBerry carriers. In fact many own the dreaded Android or iPhone.
We tried to access the RIM press release but were continually presented by a Title without article. However, the Will Connors of The Wall Street Journal was more fortunate, allowing us to mine his report.
Tracking Employee Communication Devices
The product is not simply aimed at the mobile phone; it recognizes the increasing diversity of work-related devices and focuses on the expanding mobile-device management service.
Corporations have increasingly acceded to employee’s arguments that they prefer features offered by either Apple’s iPhone or Google Inc.’s Android; a headache for standardization loving IT security minded Czar’s.
Mobile Fusion
It would appear that RIM management have conceded that small developers were offering software that permitted Corporate IT to more easily manage and provide quality security for the increasingly diverse choices their staff had made.
BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is a software system that allows companies to integrate competing devices and operating systems into their corporate mobile ecosystem. It will include BlackBerry features long appreciated by corporations; the ability to remotely lock a phone and to wipe data from a mislaid or stolen handset.
Company Wide Connectivity
One objective of Mobile Fusion is to permit IT departments to upgrade programs, apps and software across their entire network. The novelty is that the RIM has integrated the ability to service competing smartphone’s. If you can’t beat them, join them.
Multiple OS Compatibilities
RIM have announced that the Mobile Fusion software will be compatible with the current BlackBerry operating system, the forthcoming BBX OS that will populate the new generation of BlackBerry’s, with Apple OS as well as Google Android OS.
The Mobile Fusion software is the fruit of an acquisition made earlier this year when RIM purchased Munich based mobile phone security specialist ubitexx.
Services And Software
A bright light in RIMs’ dismal performance throughout 2011 has been its services and software elements; not often featured but well respected by analysts and clients.
Services and software accounted for 25% of RIM’s revenues in the last quarter, generating steady income in spite of investors negative views of RIM’s continued loss of market share.
As we at unlockworldwide.com recently noted in our article “Who’s Fit and Who’s Flagging After Q3?”, they did so while increasing the number of handsets shipped. So it’s good to hear something, learn something and say something positive about BlackBerry.
Apples On The Tree, BlackBerry’s On The Bush
While recognition of a reality is often hard, acknowledgement of great diversity in the converging communication world is quite possibly a very positive symptom. Dr Unlock thinks that the patient may yet recover some of its former charm and exhuberance.