I'll re-iterate again...I work in corporate IT. I have for many years, for several large, prestigious companies. As a function of my job, corporate wireless devices have fallen under my purview, from both a front and back end perspective.
With all of that, with a finger on the pulse of the industry-- Blackberry is losing customers every single day.
It is NOT the only choice on the market anymore. As I alluded to in an earlier post, there was a time that they could pirate their customers due to a relative monopoly, requiring additional licensing, hardware requirements\overhead(in the form of a Blackberry Enterprise Server being required). That's not even considering the way that the devices themselves have fallen behind.
Conversely, you have Android\iPhone, that will work seamlessly with Exchange\Domino services that your company is already running anyway, without the need for costly additional Blackberry licenses, hardware, or administration. Android\iPhone\WM devices all work to sync email, calendar, contacts via Microsoft's ActiveSync technology, which is a native feature to MS Exchange. Most of the large IT shops in Nashville that I have contacts at\have worked at...including the government agency I work for currently...have abandoned or are planning to abandon Blackberry\BES for Android devices. In addition, we're retiring our BES servers, which means that users with personal devices that they wish to receive work email on are out of luck, unless they use something ActiveSync compatible. We're not going to keep paying RIM money just for the "privilege" of our employees using the devices. So Blackberry loses on two fronts -- they've already lost our corporate account, and our users, when it comes time to buy a new device, have to consider that if they want their work email on their phone, they need to purchase something that's not Blackberry, as well.
My story isn't unique. This is happening EVERYWHERE, throughout the industry. You can pound your chest and reassure yourself that RIM\Blackberry are fine, that they'll rebound, and that they're still "the only choice" for business use. You are categorically incorrect.
Until RIM overhauls their entire model...does away with the BES\CAL requirement, comes about 3 years into the present with their devices, and actually LISTENS TO THEIR LARGEST CUSTOMERS, they will continue to decline, until they've gone completely the way of Palm. It's not "if," it's "when."
