Corporate users are still buying Research In Motion's
Blackberry service in massive numbers, despite widespread prior
awareness of Microsoft and Vodafone's plans to launch a rival push
e-mail service early this year.
Latest figures from analyst Gartner show RIM shipped 3.2 million
Blackberry devices in 2005 - up from 2.2 million in 2004.
Forrester analyst Ellen Daley said Blackberry was still the most
complete service at the moment, despite the doubts raised by RIM's
patent dispute in the US.
"All the uncertainty surrounding the NTP/RIM court battles does
not diminish the fact that RIM's Blackberry device and service is
the optimal user experience for wireless e-mail on the market
today," she said.
The downside of the Microsoft service, said Daley, was the fact
that only limited carrier-certified devices were currently
available, with only the Vodafone service confirmed as becoming
available in March.
"Expect more in the first half of 2006," she added. But in the
longer term, Daley said the integration potential of Microsoft's
service made it a major threat to Blackberry.
"RIM has had some limited success in making the Blackberry a
mobile application platform, particularly for small and
medium-sized businesses." She said Forrester thought Microsoft
would prove more viable in the long run because it offers an
operating system that is familiar to business users, and the .net
development environment is relatively easy to use compared with
RIM's non-standard Java system.
Daley said she expected users to be prepared to support both
Blackberry and Microsoft simultaneously, despite the expense.
"RIM/Blackberry will still offer the best wireless e-mail
experience available in terms of usability." But she predicted that
users would, over time, migrate to Windows Mobile as mobile
business applications start to appear.
Todd Kort, principal analyst in Gartner's Computing Platforms
Worldwide group, said the signs were that Blackberry users were
generally "staying put" for the moment because of the high costs of
switching, the lack of suitable alternative devices, and the low
probability of Blackberry's service being shut down.
Business users so far appear cautious about the new entrant into
mobile e-mail. Alan Powell, IS director of Hanover Housing
Association, said his was a "keep it simple" organisation that
would not want to adopt the two services in parallel. "In our case,
the fewer the suppliers, the better."
But with the US legal dispute still hanging over RIM, Forrester
is recommending cautious IT directors to investigate alternative
push e-mail technologies such as Microsoft's and line up "priority
users" to migrate.