Earlier this year, CEO Thorsten Heins of beleaguered tech company BlackBerry infamously stated, “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.” The press had a field day with this quote and the explosive growth of tablets in 2013 alone seems to be proving otherwise. As if to rub Mr. Heins’ and other tablet-doomsayer’s faces in it, October is seeing the launch of multiple new tablets, including new lineups from Microsoft, Nokia and Apple, all essentially debuting on the same day.
Apple dominated the American media on Oct 22 with the debut of “the lightest full-sized tablet” on the market, the iPad Air, weighing in at a diminutive single pound. It also updated the wildly popular iPad Mini with its high-resolution “Retina” display, bringing the 7″ tablet up to par with competing models from Google and Amazon. In an attempt to not be out-done (and sadly not quite succeeding in that effort), Nokia announced its first tablet today as well. The Lumia 2520 will run Microsoft’s Windows RT, a move that analysts questioned given the tepid consumer response to Microsoft’s tablet OS, but is not unexpected in light of the Redmond tech-giant’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s hardware business. Not wanting to be left out of the tablet party, Microsoft held its own midnight release event on Oct 21 at its retail stores around the country to celebrate the arrival of the Surface 2. Despite loud music, flashy displays and enthusiastic staff, the Surface 2 launch parties seemed to be (unsurprisingly) sparsely attended.
What this means for you:
If you’ve been holding off on buying a tablet for some reason, the market is currently overflowing with choices, and many of them are very strong on features and backed by staunch developer support and healthy ecosystems, notably the iOS and Android family of products. Though many are saying it’s too early to tell, the Windows RT and Windows 8 tablets have a stiff, uphill climb in the market, something that is keeping developers away from the OS, leaving Microsoft’s app marketplace relatively barren compared to the competition. There’s been a minor stir of interest in the Surface tablets from the arts industry, primarily because of the hardware’s robust pressure sensitivity, but unless you have a specific use case in mind, I’d steer clear of the Windows tablets for now. If you’ve been concerned about the size and weight of the 10″ tablets (very hard to use as bedtime readers or if you spend any time as a standing commuter) you can’t go wrong with a 7″ tablet from either Apple, Google or Amazon, all of which now feature high-definition screens, robust app stores and great portability.
BlackBerry (formerly RIM) has been struggling in the smartphone market, having recently fallen into 4th place behind even Microsoft’s fledgling foray into that space. Despite the recent release and generally positive reviews of their 10-series phones, the mobile device manufacturer ceded their corporate dominance years ago to the crushing flood of iOS and Android devices primarily because of the company’s failure to stay competitive on the software side. In a move that has analysts scratching their head, BlackBerry is now making a play via software with a new platform called “Secure Work Spaces” which aims to allow for peaceful and secure co-existance of personal and corporate data on smartphones, including iOS and Android devices.
What this means for you:
Corporations struggle with allowing their employees to use corporate phones for business, and vice versa, with corporate phones and personal usage, primarily because the risk of security breaches is much higher on the personal side. BlackBerry’s new platform is designed to create a partition that keeps the two work spaces (see what they did there?) separate, giving enterprises complete control over corporate data without the distasteful invasion and control over the personal aspects of devices. There are other companies working on this same concept, and have been in the space longer, but BlackBerry’s reputation (and probably some nostalgic sentiment) may win the heart’s and minds of corporate IT managers. Seeing as BlackBerry has historically been a company that depends on hardware sales for revenue, many think that BlackBerry is either making a desperate or cunning pivot to the software space, knowing that there is little chance they can recover any ground in the mobile device race.
According to BlackBerry’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, tablets will lose their market dominance in 5 years, to be replaced by, presumably, smartphones like the BlackBerry, and larger monitors. Assuming he is referring to the business space, it’s hard to decide whether his prediction is some parts sour grapes – BlackBerry’s own tablet, the Playbook, was a market failure and nearly bankrupted the company – and some parts wishful, magical thinking to self-fulfill their own business goals, which is to supplant tablets (dominated by the iPad and to a lesser extent Android) with their devices. As is usually the case with controversial predictions, Heins’ prognostications have roots in fact. Apple’s profits have been declining, as has its margins on the iPad, giving analysts cause to speculate on the longevity of the platform.
What this means for you:
Unless you are about to make a substantial investment in bringing tablets into your business processes (and even if you are), Heins’ predictions are likely to have little impact on you. BlackBerry wants to be considered a competitor in the mobile device space, and as they can’t compete on the tablet level, the traditional business tactic one can take in this situation is to attempt to invalidate the competition’s strategy by influencing the market. “Tablet’s will be dead in five years. Everyone will be using BlackBerries,” makes for good headlines, but any student of technology history will tell you that smarter technology leaders and innovators got more wrong than right when attempting to predict the future.
In what many analysts are seeing as another setback for beleaguered BlackBerry, the US Department of Defense has now announced that it will start allowing the use of iPhones and Android devices in a space that was once the domain of BlackBerry devices. In the early days of mobile email delivery, BlackBerry devices were designed for enterprise-controlled security, where as the other email-capable devices still relied on immature internet standards, or like Apple’s early iPhones, completely eschewed corporate control. Because of this, BlackBerry became the defacto standard for any business that valued security over style, including pretty much every government agency around the world.
What this means for you:
Don’t count BlackBerry out just yet, but the count is getting shorter and shorter, and at some point the referree might need to stop the fight. The Pentagon isn’t getting rid of BlackBerries (that would be a haymaker they won’t get up from), but they are now opening up the space for departments to use solutions from other vendors (namely Apple and Android). This is a signal to the rest of the world that might have been sceptical of iOS or Android’s security status that if the world’s most powerful military is willing to consider using iPhones and Androids, maybe those platforms have finally caught (and passed) BlackBerry on the security front.
Industry analysts are taking off their rose-colored glasses after examining the results of BlackBerry’s largely lackluster launch of their OS 10 platform. Original estimates had the newly renamed company (formerly Research In Motion) selling as many as 1.75 million new phones following the Jan 30 debut. Using words like “soft launch” and “modest demand”, analysts are now revising their estimates down by as much as 83%, putting BlackBerry’s comeback into serious doubt.
What this means for you:
It’s probably too early to call it, but BlackBerry really needed a big splash with the 10 launch and to keep surging forward with momentum to stay on par with upcoming anticipated Samsung and Apple launches on tap for Summer. Early reviews indicate that version 10 phones have caught up with the competition, but the technology hasn’t leapfrogged the competition, something BlackBerry really needs to do to gain any footing in this market, as they can’t outspend Google, Apple or even Samsung. If your company is heavily invested in BlackBerry and still supports it for corporate communications, you can’t go wrong with a Z10 or Q10, as long as your IT department has committed to keeping their BB infrastructure current. If they seem even the littlest bit wishy-washy on that subject, or they already support Android and iOS devices, you’ll make a safer investment in another platform.
Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the once-dominant BlackBerry platform, has announced the launch date of its BlackBerry 10 phones to be January 30 by all the major US carriers except Sprint, who has promised a BB10 phone later in the year. Many analysts believe that this launch is the last-ditch effort by RIM to regain relevance in an industry dominated by iPhone and Android devices, and just as many have already counted them out.
What this means for you:
If you are one of the dwindling BlackBerry faithful, there is a lot to whet your (by now, monstrous) appetite: the new RIM OS modern look and all new code-base (supposedly no carry-over code from older RIM OS’s) will hopefully update BlackBerry’s staid, corporate image. However, the new BB10 phones have multiple strikes against them:
- Developers for the “staple” apps (Facebook, Google, Netflix, etc) will undoubtedly develop versions of their omnipresent apps because they can fund the development off the backs of their profitable iOS and Android counterparts, but don’t expect surprise hits from indie developers appearing on BB10 first – there just isn’t a large enough userbase to warrant the investment gamble. RIM has sponsored some recent events to kickstart development, but proof will be in whether BB10’s launch will be a repeat of Microsoft’s Windows Phone lackluster debut.
- BlackBerry’s current infrastructure has some serious redudancy flaws that has led to some titanic outages. Once viewed as the most reliable platform in the early days of smartphones, the series of recent, widespread outages has severely tarnished RIM’s image.
- RIM has been lapped by Apple and Google, OS-wise, at least 2 to 3 times now. RIM is just launching a competitor to phone OS’s that were developed years ago. Unless this horse can fly, there is no way BB10 is catching iOS6 or Jelly Bean in this race.
I suspect that RIM isn’t quite done – they still have a nice chunk of the market, but they aren’t going to supplant iPhones or Androids anytime soon.
Just a week after the debut of Windows 8, Microsoft held a press event in San Francisco, CA to announce the arrival of the latest version of its smartphone platform, dubbed Windows Phone 8. Timed to coincide with (and possibly to even eclipse) Google’s canceled East-coast press event, Microsoft instead had to fight for media attention with Hurricane Sandy. As a distant fourth place competitor, Microsoft has struggled to gain a toe hold in the smartphone race, facing daunting leads from Apple and Google, and even trailing the flagging RIM Blackberry platform.
What this means for you:
Unless you are a true-blue Microsoft fanatic, you more than likely already own a smartphone that gets the job done. There is a distinct possibility for Microsoft to overtake RIM’s Blackberry platform as the corporate phone of choice, but many enterprises have already opened their iron curtains for iPhones and Android devices. Gaining RIM’s share of the pie will only put them in 3rd place, and as such, integration into corporate environments will still take a backseat to solidifying usage of the dominant platforms. Most adopters of this platform will either be disatisfied technophiles looking for something fresh and different from iOS and Android, or corporate technologists investigating the platforms ability to integrate with existing Microsoft infrastructure. Microsoft’s primary hurdle in getting people to buy Windows phone remains in the lackluster app development landscape, which continues to be dominated by iPhone. Many of the most popular apps aren’t available yet for Windows Phone 8, and their arrival (if they come at all) will likely lag iOS and Android versions by months. If your primary smartphone usage is focused on making calls, checking email, and sharing pictures with your phone, Windows Phone 8 will get the job done, but if you like apps and don’t consider yourself an “early adopter”, give the platform at least another 6 months before weighing a change in platforms.
Once the darling of the business world, RIM’s BlackBerry phone platform has seen a continous erosion of its dominance in the corporate world since Apple’s iPhone first arrived on the scene in 2007. Two recent articles in PC World and CNET underline RIM’s continuing struggle to remain relevant in an iPhone/Android world.
According to those that have seen it, RIM’s impending release of version 10 of the BlackBerry OS will put the company’s phones on par with its competition, but at the cost of incompatibility with the existing Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) infrastructure installed in just about every business that supports them.
On top of this huge stumbling block, retailers are pulling back their commitments to BlackBerries, according to one analyst, signaling a general lack of confidence in the strength of the platform and brand.
What this means for you:
If your company has standardized on BlackBerries for its employees and you have a decent investment in technology and resources to support it, you should have nothing to worry about in the short term, but should closely evaluate future spending to support this platform. Your 2-5 year plan should look into expanding your communication network to include the other smartphone platforms, if they aren’t already in use in your enterprise. The BlackBerry platform still has numerous strengths, mostly in the area of asset managment, security and reliability, but the older devices lack modern appeal and versatility. Today’s modern employee, especially the younger generations, view their phones as an extension of both their professional and personal lives, and the continued lack of innovation on the platform has eroded their credibility, utility and appeal across the board.
While it’s possible that RIM may work a miracle and come back from the brink of extinction, I rate their chances as highly unlikely.