Whilst the hardware was really good - I loved the HD video - where were the apps? Blackberry phones - again, too reactive. Apple caught RIM totally unawares, closely followed by Android and now Windows Mobile, which seems to be gaining traction too.
The best bit of phone business for Microsoft and Apple was Apple licensing ActiveSync from Microsoft and, thereby, making Microsoft Exchange available to anyone with an iPhone or, subsequently, iPad.
Microsoft reinforced Exchange as a corporate email server and Apple had a tool which could address the email needs of the iPhone community who usually want access to their corporate email when it's usually on an Exchange server.
Outages? The embarrassing outages of service were just too much for cautious corporates and where security of email wasn't a huge consideration the 'compelling' nature of Blackberry and the accompanying Enterprise Server became something less than 'compelling' with corporates moving over-the-air email back to their own control.
On the subject of security... Aftermarket providers are coming in and pulling that particular plank from under RIM and so the company is notionally left as the Betamax or HD-DVD format for the phone community.
RIM should admit that it has lost the battle, pull graciously out of the war and slowly extricate from the phone market without leaving customers high and dry.
Instead of "Research In Motion", RIM seems to now be an abbreviation of "Reactive In Market" and having [seemingly] lost its initiative, RIM has lost the initiative."
Mark Evans, IT manager, RLB
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