RIM still tops with key demographics

If we have to endure the gross amplification of every negative BlackBerry story, we might as well highlight the ones that paint RIM in a positive light. These stories won’t be widely circulated. No one at BGR will write a missive about them. But they’re still positive stories that illustrate why RIM is not yet dead, and why, with a little help from a big new platform, they’ll live to see many more years. That’s because they still have some pull with entities that have served them well in the past: government agencies and enterprise in general. This week SC Magazine cited a Trend Micro report which shows that BlackBerry 7 is the “most compatible for enterprise use.” It was compared to iOS 5, Windows Phone 7.5, and Android 2.3. The criteria used: “built-in security, application security, authentication, device wipe, device firewall and virtualisation.” Not only does BlackBerry 7 sit atop the pack, it does so by an enormous margin. Android scored the lowest at 1.37, while iOS had the best non-BlackBerry score at 1.7. That’s a mere .33 difference. BlackBerry 7 received a score of 2.89, or 1.19 better than iOS. There’s a quote at the end of the article that not only brings home the idea of mobile security being of the utmost importance in enterprise, but also reinforces RIM’s decision to refocus on enterprise with BlackBerry 10. “Security people I work with are scared witless by consumerisation and the rapid adoption of these devices. Aside from the technical challenges, organisations need to understand the importance of a decent mobile device security policy and supporting user education.” (Just to cover all bases, I did find that story via CrackBerry.) The US government is also big on BlackBerry, apparently. A Bloomberg article cites RIM’s senior VP of BlackBerry security Scott Totzke, who says: “Compared to the enterprise over the last year and a half or so, the federal business on whole is up. The employee base is shrinking, so if we’re looking at a market with fewer employees and our install base is stable to slightly up, that would seem to indicate that we have an increasing market share.” That’s surely in no small part due to BlackBerry 7′s superior security systems. These are not groundbreaking stories. In fact, combined with RIM’s earnings-call announcement that they’ll place a greater emphasis on enterprise, it can be seen as something of a negative for consumers who want BlackBerry devices. Fret not, though. RIM still wants to release consumer devices, and it appears that their strong enterprise base, including government agencies, will allow them to do so.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.