BlackBerry Phones Losing Traction in the Enterprise Market

Once considered a corporate standard, RIM’s BlackBerry (News - Alert) is starting to lose its mighty grip among business users, says a study from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA (News - Alert)).

More than 30 percent of BlackBerry users among enterprises with at least 10,000 employees expect to jump ship to a different mobile platform within the next year, according to EMA’s research. That’s a hefty amount considering that 52 percent of mobile device users among large businesses currently depend on a BlackBerry phone for their work.

The main reason for the potential switch? User dissatisfaction. Only 16 percent of the users polled by EMA said they were completely satisifed with their BlackBerry. In comparison, 44 percent of iPhone (News - Alert) users expressed satisfaction with their device. User satisfaction has grown in importance, notes EMA, as more employees are using their own personal smartphones on the job rather than relying on a company-supplied device.

Though RIM is still a top player around the world, it’s gradually been losing market share to the likes of Apple and Android (News - Alert). That trend has in part been triggered by the ongoing consumerization of IT where employees increasingly want to use the same devices they use at home. But the overall results of the poll seemed to surprise even the folks at EMA.

“We expected to see some market share loss by RIM, but these results were far more dramatic than we could have anticipated,” said Steve Brasen, EMA’s Managing Research Director. “Both enterprises and employees indicated they were broadly abandoning BlackBerry devices for primarily Android and iOS platforms – and this data was collected before the recent BlackBerry service failures, which can be expected to even further accelerate migration.”

RIM certainly alienated many of its faithful followers last month when it experienced a network outage that affected a large number of BlackBerry users throughout the world. So if EMA conducted its poll today, the percentage of BlackBerry owners eyeing a different mobile device could easily be higher than 30 percent.

With its emphasis on security and reliability, the BlackBerry has been king of the corporate smartphone market for many years. Many businesses came to rely not just on the phones themselves but on RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which made it easier for IT to manage the flow of e-mail and other data for their users. To be sure, the BlackBerry ecosystem is still highly valued for its tight security.

RIM has even got itself into trouble with various foreign governments over its refusal to give them the encryption keys necessary to view e-mails and instant messages. The company has argued that those keys are owned by its corporate customers and therefore it’s unable to simply hand them over. Though RIM was forced to make some small concessions to continue operating in certain countries, overall, the company stood firm in trying to protect the data of its customers.

But since the debut of the iPhone and the onslaught of Android devices, both individuals and businesses have been eyeing these alternative platforms. The iPhone and Android may not offer the robust security provided by RIM, But once again the consumerization of IT rears its head, prompting more long-time BlackBerry users to jump onboard the Apple (News - Alert) and Android bandwagon.

So, what’s your company’s smartphone of choice? And do you have any plans to switch? Feel free to chime in below in the Comments section.