BlackBerry program may help RIM defend its turf
(Reuters) - Research In Motion aims to keep its dominance of the corporate smartphone market by enabling the BlackBerry to segregate a user's personal data from work-related emails and other applications sponsored by employers.
Context & Ripple Effects
RIM's corporate moat has always rested on manageability: by early 2010 it was shipping wireless-security and device-management applications pitched squarely at mobile IT, and since 2007 it had been stretching the hardware line toward consumer-style touch devices. Meanwhile its signature selling point — secure corporate email — sat under government scrutiny, with India's access demands unresolved through late 2010 despite an August reprieve.
The data-segregation program announced today is RIM's answer to consumerization pressure: instead of forcing companies to choose between a locked-down BlackBerry and an employee's preferred handset, one device would carry both an employer-sponsored work profile and the user's personal data.
First-order effects
- Corporate IT departments gain a single sanctioned device holding locked-down work email alongside personal apps, removing the either-or choice between a BlackBerry and an employee-preferred smartphone.
- The feature deepens dependence on RIM's server-side management stack, reinforcing the enterprise lock-in that underwrites the platform's margins.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Android makers competing for the same corporate accounts come under pressure to deliver equivalent work/personal separation or concede the managed-email segment RIM dominates.
- Third-party mobile-device-management vendors risk being squeezed where RIM bundles segregation directly into its own infrastructure, the same territory its 2010 security and management apps targeted.
Third-order effects
- If work/personal separation becomes a baseline OS capability rather than a BlackBerry differentiator, enterprise competition shifts from whole-device loyalty to whose platform manages the work container best.
- Government demands like India's push into BlackBerry's secure email suggest national-access disputes will attach themselves to whichever segregated architecture wins the enterprise — security positioning and regulatory exposure arriving together.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are converging on a managed split between work and personal data as enterprises absorb employee-chosen devices.