Is the Future of BlackBerry Secure in the Corporates?

In recent times, the ubiquity of RIM’s award winning smartphone BlackBerry has been shrinking, thanks to companies providing an option of allowing their employees to add third-party security applications to their own picked up or chosen smart phones. This certainly gives the employees the freedom to opt for their own smart phone and in addition they take on more responsibility for security. Companies offering such applications such as Good Technology and Mobile Iron are thus intruding Blackberry’s mainstay in the corporate market.

The USP of Blackberry has been Research In Motion’s top tier security and appealing management features helping the top notch Business Firms and IT managers to control the corporate information they share with their employees, thus helping to avoid any cyber attacks on their businesses. But, analysts at CCS Insight are of the opinion that the consumer market is repeating itself in the enterprise market. People tend to and want to use the technology in their work life they use in their daily personal lives.

As more and more smart phones coming up now and then with specialized features, people are more than comfortable using them in their work as well. Mobile device analysts from major firms, when contacted by Reuters, explain that RIM’s enterprise base has been besieged by Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. In-fact, out of nine major U.S companies, only two of them, namely Boeing and Exxon Mobil exclusively use Blackberry. But all the other companies are on a spree to allow their employees to choose from the various options available today in the corporate market. These seven major U.S companies namely, Alcoa, Caterpillar, Dupont, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Microsoft and Verizon Communication, offer such facilities with added security applications on the smart phones. These third party security options such as email encryption and technology help IT managers to remotely control data on their personal phones. The corporate data affected by virus-infected phones or in lost phones can be wiped off completely. As secure information management is critical to any Business strategy, many Business Firms are of the view that the third party applications embedded in their phones are secure and help in preventing attacks to their firms.

A Research Firm comScore has studied the U.S smart phone’s market share which clearly indicates a fall from its 35 percent share in October last year to 25 percent in April this year, making Blackberry count coming down to third place from its coveted first position. The respective top positions being taken over officially by the now famous Google’s Android-run Smart phones and Steve Jobs Apple’s iPhones. This loss has been credited to them because of their delay and postponing in introducing new phones and technologies to compete in the market with other smart phones. Another survey claims that the Company-bought smart phones fell to seven percent of the market share in 2010 from 15 percent in 2009.

Yankee Group found that 55% of IT managers still prefer RIM as their operating system and will continue to use Blackberry but are unsure to use it for the coming years. Boeing is still clear about using Blackberry as it trusts none other security option as it provides and though RIM has been hit hard in the corporate cradle, people only hope they come up with more exciting features and phones in the near future.