February 24, 2006

Black Berry: It's More than Corporate Servers

I was reading an article in Globe and Mail which reminded that although there are a number of companies who have given Black Berry's to their staff, like they give out ball point pens, their are many individuals who have Black Berry's as they have purchased them on their own and don't have them paid for by the corporate sugar daddy.

These small business owners, for the most part, buy them and use them to grow their businesses - it's a real part of their life.

The story reads The second, which was probably less obvious to the other executives in the room, was Mr. Balsillie's failure to mention anything about customers beyond those who receive a BlackBerry from their corporate IT manager. This, despite the fact that workers who may not have an IT manager in their company at all make up an ever increasing portion of RIM's installed base. The threat of a service shutdown in the United States has put the spotlight on the large companies that deploy BlackBerrys across their organizations, but in the long term it's small businesses that may be key to RIM's future growth.

The BlackBerry economy is split between two worlds. There are large firms that have installed a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), which allows many users of the portable devices to stay connected to their corporate network.

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