Recently I heard someone say that they sure wished they could get email on their Treo 700w like they were able to with their BlackBerry and it got me to thinking about BlackBerry Connect and when it might be released here in the U.S.
Now the the NTP patent dispute is over, Research in Motion’s partners don’t have to worry about being sued if they allow their devices to be connected to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server so my guess is that we will see BlackBerry Connect clients, at least for the Treo, sooner rather than later.
The question that I have is when finally released, Will BlackBerry Connect hurt BlackBerry device sales?
Many organizations tightly control which BlackBerry devices their employees use, however, there are a lot of companies out their don’t care what device you use so long as they can hook it up to the corporate BES. In fact, a lot of companies require that their employees buy their own BlackBerry devices with their own data plans. Studies have shown that most BlackBerry users are loyal to the mobile email service, not necessarily the device and, in fact, actually find competing handset designs extremely appealing so long as they can get BlackBerry service on them.
If BlackBerry Connect ever becomes widely available on 3rd party handsets, BlackBerry device sales, which is still where Research in Motion makes most of it’s money, could possibly take at hit.
I think this is another good reason RIM should consider a Windows Mobile powered BlackBerry, however, that is for another post.
I am not sure having BB Connect out there will hurt their *overall* sales. I for one have been holding out my switch to BB. Currently I have a Treo 650 and it is setup to work exactly the way I want it to. I also would like to have BB email, but I am not prepare, first, to pay ~$300 for the 8700 and get less functionality (no camera, no SD card, etc.). Having BB Connect for Palm/WM5 means that RIM will have an additional subscriber like myself. Surely that can’t be bad business?
Similar to Alex, I’ve got a different device (T-Mobile MDA) and would like to connect with my company’s BES. Having the BB Connect software would do this and allow me to keep my device of choice. It would also bring another license to BB that they otherwise would not have.
Supposedly, HTC has an agreement with BB on the Connect software. US Carriers seem not to have picked it up and may have been because of the litigation that was resently settled.
My comapany has GoodLink and BlackBerry because we didn’t want to take a chance that BlackBerry was going to be shutdown. I had been using a BlackBerry for a couple of years but I just switched to the T-Mobile MDA because it has a camera on it and I no longer have to use one device to get email and another device to use as a camera phone.
My husband bought and MDA as well, but he has to still carry his BlackBerry because his company doesn’t have GoodLink set up. I am sure that he would get rid of his BlackBerry if he could get his email on his MDA with BlackBerry connect though.
That was a pretty good post until you ended it with that comment about RIM adding Windows Mobile to the BlackBerry.
Why in the world would they take a good, stable, secure OS and replace it with that piece of crap microsoft software that, is buggy, and gets horrible battery life.
Trust me, I used to own a dell axiom. Pocket PC or windows mobile or whatever they are calling it these days is the last thing you would want to see on a BlackBerry.
As you allude to, such decisions involve inevitable tradeoffs, and so I think it depends on where RIM wants to go as a company.
Do they want to make most of their money from hardware, or from software?
I have generally found the BB hardware to be of a higher build quality, offer better screen, etc than other devices. For instance, the 8700 is just awesome and blows away the Treo in quality and screen.
However, as illustrated by some of the comments above, there are certainly people who prefer devices like the Treo, largely due to the fact that these devices have more multimedia apps, such as camera, external card slot, etc.
What I think RIM should do, and may very well be planning to do if the rumors are correct, is to introduce BBs with those type of features built in. A BB 8700 or 7130 with camera and SD slot would be a Treo killer, IMHO.
What RIM may be figuring is that they will compete on all fronts, and see where that leaves them.
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