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Developers Defecting From BlackBerry
jfruhlinger writes "Mobile app developers who build for multiple platforms need to figure out how to conserve their resources somehow, and many are choosing to do so by not bothering to build apps for BlackBerry phones. It's a combination of declining market share and the general difficulty of building apps for the BlackBerry platform, one developer told Bloomberg: 'RIM brought in a touchscreen and mixed it with a thumbwheel, a keyboard and shortcut keys, it made it really difficult and expensive to develop across devices.'"
I'm hearing through the grapevine that Blackberry's corporate position isn't all that secure either. I know of one medium-sized company that has been replacing Blackberries with iPhones, and talking to their tech guy, they may be shutting down their BES server this fall if all goes according to plan. Since integration into Exchange, which is the big deal, isn't all that hard any more, the limited lock in that RIM had is gone.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's not quite true. The BB is a secure smart-ish-phone which makes it ideal for corporate/government use. It's locked down and encrypted.
Don't get on your platform high horse or anything, something happening too often here (get off my lawn) but ...
Android isn't secure at all. Until Android phones start coming with hardware based encryption we can't use them, it basically rules them out at the first stage. People are pushing to use Android but it is a no go right now. Same for Windows Phone 7, no hardware encryption = no use, although no-one is pushing for WP7.
We're slowly moving to the iPhone 4 through Exchange and a MDM, people want to use the iPhone, we can configure it just as strongly as the BB and it has AES 256 hardware encryption. It's a win-win.
From an IT standpoint. Blackberry Enterprise sucks. Bailing on that is a must.
1. You need to install a server software to integrate with Exchange (unless you reroute all your email to some internet email service)
2. Not suppose to have Exchange and BES on the same server, so one more point of failure.
3. Said server requires....is it Java, Kerberos, and mixed Server OS environment combination that's broken? I don't know, I stopped trying to fix it. RIM didn't have a good explanation and their ultimate solution sucked.
4. Not fully integrated with Exchange, Exchange's mobile policy's don't push to it. Blackberry Server has it's own mobile policy I guess
Smartphones that talk to exchange are wham, bam, thank you ma'am. For BB, if you have the Java,Kerberos, mixed Server OS issue, you can't add new phones. If you can't get into your exchange server to do the MINOR configuration, you have bigger problems then not adding a new phone.
The only thing I wish they'd port to Exchange-capable phones is, RIM doing token/serialized authentication, removing the need to redo password on the phone each time it's changed.
In other words, you haven't read any documentation on the BB environment. Besides, BES supports more Exchange features than ActiveSync. And yes, BlackBerries have their own policy settings separate of Exchange with much, MUCH more control over the devices. This is something you would know if you would have actually read something about the BB platform.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson