BlackBerry settlement doesn't mean an automatic win or an end to increased pressure and competition
MSN Money: - RIM's stock jumps 16 pct on BlackBerry deal
The reports are coming in now predicting doom and gloom for Palm and other phone manufacturers and email software providers now that RIM and NTP have settled. While this is certainly good news for BlackBerry and for software innovation in general, RIM finds itself facing a new challenge and competitors. And instead of fighting the battle in the courtroom, these opponents will be coming after them in the marketplace with great and innovative products and solutions.
There are now enough middleware solutions across a wide enough variety of devices to put direct pressure on RIM's core business - secure, corporate email. In addition, Microsoft is continuing to evolve its direct push email system built right into Exchange Server 2003, Exchange ActiveSync.
New devices will be coming to market in the coming year that will combine style, great phone experience, excellent messaging capabilities and optional, capable cameras. These devices will be coming from phone heavyweights like Motorola, Nokia and Samsung; smartphone innovators like Palm; and manufacturers like iMate and HTC.
The Windows Mobile system, including Exchange ActiveSync on the server and mobile clients accessing corporate information in real time with Direct Push synchronization, provides low cost, easy to deploy and manage mobile messaging to an organization already running Exchange Server.
The BlackBerry solution requires servers to be purchased and managed. It requires devices to be purchased, maintained and upgraded and requires special data service plans. And while large organizations with substantial deployments may be used to such considerations, small and medium businesses who today dismiss a mobile messaging solution because they see it as too costly or too much to manage, may opt to try out the built-in Microsoft solution and find that it serves their purposes well. They will then begin to understand the productivity gains from being able to manage email, attachments and scheduling while on the go.
There is no doubt that the BlackBerry system does many things right. It is an administrator’s dream with many, very specific controls available as IT policy which seem as though they have been added over time as specific fixes and features based on real user needs and requests. The devices have great battery life, are durable and can be switched out with relative ease.
The keyboards themselves are very nice to type on and once you get used to it and learn shortcuts, you can navigate through email very quickly. However, I feel like the overall experience of the device has been allowed to languish because it does messaging so well. The phone experience is poor when compared to Treo, Windows Mobile devices, and much worse than traditional keypad phones.
There are so many things that require multiple presses of the menu with the scroll wheel which seems like a very outdated metaphor. Excellent one handed experience using a 5way control like you get with Treo is where devices like this need to be. Also, I feel like the performance is sluggish on the BlackBerry, but the payback for that is likely extended battery life.
My point is that the hardware speed and battery life and screens and so forth will all continue to improve at a fast pace and the more complicated Windows Mobile platform will start to be more at home in terms of resource requirements and performance. At that point, the .Net framework for business systems will begin to show its inherent usefulness. It will be the desired development platform for customized mobile oriented business solutions as new mobile devices are released over the next couple of years. This, I believe will occur despite RIM, Good and others who will be providing their own “back end” database access servers as additional middleware to their Exchange email and PIM synchronization servers.
So while the settlement decision is good news for RIM, it has its work cut out in order for it to remain in the lead with mobile messaging solutions.