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Posts Tagged ‘RIM’

In a survey of 218 US businesses, Boston-based Aberdeen group has found more than twice as many businesses intended to implement Windows Mobile solutions than Blackberry-based solutions in 2010.

While RIM’s Blackberry was more widely implemented in 2009, with 74% of businesses using the devices vs 63% using Windows Mobile, only 3% of the companies surveyed intended to introduce the platform to their business, vs 7% new wins for Windows Mobile.

That would bring Windows Mobile adoption up to 70% of US businesses, compared to 77% for Blackberry.

The Aberdeen group notes that this could be a warning sign to RIM that their enterprise momentum has slowed considerably, likely due to their new focus on consumer rather than enterprise features.

Both iPhone and Android are also growing strongly in business, but with a single mobile incident being able to cost up to $2.1 million in Sarbanes Oxley penalties businesses should be thinking twice about supporting these unproven platforms.

With only 4% of businesses planning to adopt WebOS, Palm has yet to convince the market that WebOS has a future.

Read more at MobileEnterpriseMag here.

IDC has predicted that Windows Mobile will grow strongly between 2009 and 2013.  Noting that 18.3 million Windows Mobile handsets were shipped last year (7% down on 2008), IDC predicted Windows Mobile will boost its "consumer appeal" by being easier to use and supporting more multimedia applications and games. They forecast 51.7 million Windows Mobile handsets will be shipped in 3 years time.

While they project Android to grow explosively, that still places Windows Mobile as the OS with the second fastest growth over the period at 183%. The market itself is expected to grow by 20.1% each year.

Of note is that, according to the forecast, Windows Mobile is set to overtake the iPhone again in total yearly shipments.

The study found that Linux and webOS shipments will struggle throughout the forecast period. Palm’s HTML based operating system, despite growing steadily, will capture limited market share due to limited deployment and availability of devices across multiple carriers.

IDC expects Windows Mobile to grow its market share by 3%, from 10% in 2009 to 13% in 2013, while both RIM and the iPhone will see a drop, RIM by 2% and the iPhone by 1%.

Another interesting factoid is that HTC only shipped 11.7 million smartphones in 2009, some of these of course being Android devices.  This is another indication that HTC is no longer the majority of the Windows Mobile market, and more attention should be paid to other players such as LG and certainly Samsung, who has always been a strong Windows Mobile partner.

Read more here.

A tax payers revolt is brewing in the Highlands after the Taxpayers Alliance discovered, after a Freedom of Information Request, that local councils were spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on RIM Blackberrys.

Aberdeenshire Council was the worst offender, with more than £117,000 spent on contracts this year.

The total annual bills for Blackberrys and mobile phones rose from £150,000 in 2007 to £261,000 last year and up to £346,000 this year.

Describing the figures as “staggeringly high”, the TA complained the gadgets were an unnecessary luxury.

An Aberdeenshire Council spokesman however responded that: “Blackberrys allow us to offer more flexibility to staff who need to respond to e-mails and keep in touch with what’s going on, without having to travel large distances back to an office. They are an invaluable tool in a modern business environment.”

Susie Squire, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, was unimpressed.

“They’re out of touch with economic reality,” she said. “These Blackberry costs are staggeringly high and will shock and disgust a lot of taxpayers.

An alternative which could lead to significant savings however exists, in the form of Windows Mobile handsets, which in studies have been shown to have a lower total cost of ownership of between 20 to 40%. 

In the current economic climate, and with costs being passed on automatically in increased council fees, tax payers need to be holding their elected representatives accountable for feeding their crackberry habit when better, cheaper alternatives already exist ready to be deployed.

Read more at PressandJournal.co.uk here

Rishi Srivastava, consumer and online marketing officer of Microsoft India has revealed in a Wall Street Journal interview that Microsoft in trouncing its competitors (besides Nokia of course) in the small but rapidly growing Indian smartphone market.

Rishi claimed, according to IDC, that Windows Mobile had been outselling RIM and also the iPhone for more than 3 years now, and that both in terms of installed base and sales Windows Mobile was 3-4 times larger than RIM or Apple.

Rishi admitted however that Microsoft could do better, but said with recent launches such as Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, the Bing search engine and also Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft has “rediscover(ed) our DNA as a consumer company”.

Saying Microsoft was best placed to integrate the PC, phone and the Web to provide a digital lifestyle, the company intended to, with the help of their partners, push for greater market share, .

“We want to get a bigger piece of the pie.”

Read the full interview at LiveMint.com.

AreaMobile.de reports that the German government has decided against the use of RIM’s Blackberry due to data security issues, choosing rather to use a proprietary secure data system, SIMKO 2,  installed on Windows Mobile smartphones from HTC.

These smart-phone, which has also become known as "Merkel-phone”, offers a completely secure solution for mobile data communication. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) put SiMKo through strict security checks and recommended the complete solution for the security rating VS/NfD (classified – only for internal use), suitable for use in Federal Government Office.

All data travels via VPN, and features such as WIFI and Bluetooth are disabled.  The ability to install unauthorized applications are also blocked.

Stephan Maihoff elaborates: “In view of the security hazards, it’s surprising how often smartphones are used for mission-critical decisions as a matter of course. In a business environment, insecure devices present major risks for enterprises.” Maihoff is a member of a select team of experts from T-Systems, IT security specialist certgate and VPN manufacturer NCP. Working hand in hand, the partners have leveraged HTC hardware and Microsoft Windows Mobile software to develop a high-security smartphone called SiMKo.

“We didn’t simply add on security, we built it into the system,” states Maihoff. The resulting solution comprises software, a smart card from certgate for encryption, and a digital identity, which is loaded onto the device by authorized personnel at a security center.

Through a close collaboration with HTC some version of TouchFlo3D is still in place, but this simply allows the use of the web browser (through the VPN client) and the making of phone calls.

The solution will be rolled out to 350 government agencies, 350 federal agencies, starting with 13 federal ministries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

With the economic recession continuing to bite and joblessness numbers increasing, the extra expense of supporting a Blackberry Enterprise server, with its extra per user license free has been a bridge too far from one company.

Global Crossing, a telecommunications firm which provides networking services such as VPN, video conferencing and VoIP in 60 countries and has over 5000 employees is in the process of moving from Blackberrys to Windows Mobile smartphones.

"RIM requires that you pay for a license for the BlackBerry servers," says Steven Schafer, Director of Network Services at Global Crossing. "You pay a license for every BlackBerry user that you have connected, and then you also pay for support and maintenance for the servers and users."

The move is part of its migration from Exchange 2007 to 2010 which brings new e-mail archiving capabilities, connection to cheaper storage, and a replacement for its current voicemail system, and bring along improve unified communications.

Windows Mobile 6.5 phones are the only ones that have the Outlook Mobile client that uses the new features in Outlook 2010 such as Conversation View of e-mails and having audio and transcriptions of voicemails delivered to inboxes.

Schafer is counting on such a smooth integration with Exchange 2010 and Office Communications Server.

The main problem with BlackBerry, says Schafer, is that it’s a non-ActiveSync device. As a result, you have BlackBerry servers running alongside the Exchange server, and also every mailbox with a BlackBerry connection to Exchange uses five times the connection resources that a mailbox with an Exchange ActiveSync client uses, says Schafer.

"I’d prefer all our users be on a Windows Mobile device because it integrates the best with Exchange," Schafer says. "But at the same time I would much rather have an employee go out get an iPhone than a BlackBerry because an iPhone uses ActiveSync and therefore costs us nothing, and a BlackBerry costs us money."

Current Blackberries will still be supported, but no new phones will be supplied, and the company hopes to replace them by attrition. 

At this point, Shafer says Global Crossing will still provide Exchange support for current BlackBerry users, but it has stopped providing new licenses and plans to reduce the number of BlackBerrys by attrition.

"We’re not kicking people off BlackBerrys but we’re no longer allowing new hires to be on the BlackBerry platform," says Schafer. "And we’re finding more and more that people want to be on ActiveSync phones."

Read more at  SFGate.com

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Just Another Mobile Phone Blog reports on a Chinese Windows Mobile powered rip off of the Blackberry Storm. The 3.2 inch QVGA screen has a resolution just a tad lower than the real Blackberry Storm, but of course the device wins not only by being powered by Windows Mobile, but also not having the Storm’s trademark SurePress click screen. Unfortunately the device maintains the same blocky looks of the Storm which looks particularly bad when compared to sleeker full-touch smartphones like the HTC Touch HD.

Read more about at JAMPblog.

Via IntoMobile.com