Research In Motion seems to be admitting that corporate IT departments won't help it beat back the iPhone and Android.
This morning at BlackBerry World, RIM said it will release a cross-platform version of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). It's acquiring a company called Ubitexx to provide the technology.
This is a profound shift, and could even prepare RIM for an eventual exit from the smartphone market if sales continue to plunge.
RIM's business has always been driven by IT departments. BES gives companies an easy way to do things like activate devices, manage passwords, push out software updates, and wipe lost or stolen devices clean.
But BES only worked with BlackBerrys.
Now it will provide all these features for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone and Nokia devices as well.
RIM is still reserving plenty of features for the BlackBerry only, including push e-mail and behind-the-firewall access to enterprise apps. Its position is simply that end-users are bringing competing devices itnto the enterprise anyway, so RIM might as well help IT departments manage them with the back-end software they already use to manage BlackBerry devices.
But it's also a smart hedge.
If predictions from IDC and others are correct, RIM's market share will continue its slow decline, coming in below 15% by 2015. If RIM continued to tie BES to the BlackBerry device, BES would become less and less interesting to corporate IT.
By opening up, at least RIM can continue to address 100% of the fast-growing smartphone market -- even if it's not with the product RIM would prefer to sell.
In time, RIM might find that managing phones is a better business than making them.
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RIM Gives In To iPhone And Android In The Enterprise
by Christopher DeMorro
Sometimes the government boggles me. The EPA has just given the Nissan Leaf, an all-electric car, a 99 mpg-equivalent rating. Yet they still haven't managed to figure out how to rate the Chevy Volt. For reals?
Ok, so I know that often times, the government moves at the same place as tectonic plates, and that the EPA is indeed working on a new rating system for cars and electric vehicles. However the Leaf is not as close as the Volt is to launch, and the EPA managed to get numbers out for the Leaf that, frankly, confused the hell out of me.
The EPA says one gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33.7 kWh of battery power. The EPA also says that the Leaf gets about 3.4 miles per kWh, but they rated the Leaf's range at just 73 miles after taking it through the five-cycle course they use on regular cars. In total, the Leaf managed to get 106 mpg-e city, 92 mpg-e city. In total, 99 mpg-e, giving it the best-in-class fuel economy...even though it doesn't use a drop of fuel. They also say it takes seven hours to fully charge the battery out of a 240v outlet.
While