RIM shares jump as analyst decides it isn't as dead as he thought Analyst Peter Misek has told investors he thinks RIM could yet pull out of its nosedive, predicting a 20-30 per cent chance of BlackBerry 10 gaining significant market share. In a note to investors, reported by eWeek, the Jefferies & Co analyst tells clients that operators have been surprisingly impressed with the new …
So nowhere near as much as the recent jump in Nokia shares then....
No one needs Blackberry anymore - you can connect directly to Exchange email systems from most modern handsets, and you can fully set device policy, etc. from within Exchange - you can remote wipe a device from your web mail - and if you need to manage mobile device applications, etc then SCCM can do that for you - and if you need high security then Windows Phone has a similar clean record to Blackberry...
Provided you want to put all your eggs in a Microsoft basket, you don't need RIM.
I would never have guessed.
However, the increase in ever more frantic Microsoft astroturfing in recent weeks suggests that Redmond is very worried indeed about Windows 8 in all its flavours. It's just as well they have a nice cloud product...which enables you to develop device-agnostic front ends for just about any standards compliant browser.
@jonathanb
It means that your company internal emails stay private, even when piped through to company mobiles. The emails are encrypted by the BES and decrypted only once they've arrived on the mobile. Neither BlackBerry, governments or ISPs can read it as only your company knows the key (or at least that's the idea). The Indian government in particular got very irritated and irrational about this...
Compare that with Gmail and Apple where, AFAIK, email is encrypted for transmission across the internet but is stored in the clear on Google and Apple's servers (they want to trawl through them as part of their advertising brokerage business. I think it even says so in their terms and conditions). This means that your email is readable by Google and Apple, and governments too if they turn up at their front doors with a warrant, and by any hacker who manages to get inside (like the Chinese did to Google). Dunno about MS, but they like to advertise too...
For companies *not* doing business in the US this aspect of Gmail and Apple mail is very important. The wire fraud act makes none US companies and executives liable under US law for merely discussing business practices that are illegal in the US, even if they're legal at home, if your emails go through US servers. Financial institutions in particular should worry about that a lot. So theoretically the use of an iPhone or Android for company email means that your company now has to consider and adjust for US business law even if you don't actually do business there at all. There are already several European executives in US jails for this very thing. Remember too that US prosecutors are apparently on a bonus for results scheme, and none US companies are easy pickings for them under the wire fraud act. The difference with BlackBerry/BES is that it's a *lot* harder for them to read your email in the first place, so your company is less likely to be picked on.
It's problems like this that company lawyers don't spot because they don't know the technology, and company IT administrators miss because they don't know US law to that extent.
Note that BlackBerry BIS is different. If you are a private BB owner you'll be using BIS, in which case your email rests on BlackBerry's servers which are as vulnerable as anyone else's to legal governmental interest.
"It means that your company internal emails stay private, even when piped through to company mobiles. The emails are encrypted by the BES and decrypted only once they've arrived on the mobile. Neither BlackBerry, governments or ISPs can read it as only your company knows the key (or at least that's the idea). The Indian government in particular got very irritated and irrational about this..."
SSL delivers precisely the same: your server holds a copy, your phone stores a copy (encrypted, on anything recent including iPhones) and everything passing between the two is encrypted. My ISP can't read my mail as it comes from my (non-ISP) mail server to my machines - nor can the government.
"Compare that with Gmail and Apple where, AFAIK, email is encrypted for transmission across the internet but is stored in the clear on Google and Apple's servers"
It's stored in the clear (or at least recoverably) on whatever server you use, including the Exchange systems BES talks to. If you put your server in the US - whether it's Google's Gmail server, Apple's iCloud or indeed something you wrote yourself in COBOL - their law enforcement can turn up with a warrant and seize the server and contents. They can do that if you use BES to access your Exchange mailstore too.
Using Android or an iPhone does not give Apple or Google any more control over your mail than RIM have if you use a BlackBerry: in every case, your server holds the mail, it goes over the Net encrypted. BES doesn't offer anything special in this respect at all.
"It's stored in the clear (or at least recoverably) on whatever server you use, including the Exchange systems BES talks to. If you put your server in the US - whether it's Google's Gmail server, Apple's iCloud or indeed something you wrote yourself in COBOL."
That's why I emphasised none-US companies. Their Exchange servers (traditionally speaking, anyway) are on their property, outside the US and not subject to US law. If they run Blackberry then they'll have a BES which will also be on their property so also not subject to US law. The only in the clear copies of internal company emails are on the Exchange server, the BES and the mobile phones, all of which are outside the US.
But if they go to Android and sign up to use Google's cloud (something that Google are very keen on companies doing) then the company now has to comply with US law too (so far as business practise is concerned), even if they don't trade in the US at all. SImilarly for Apple and MS.
"Using Android or an iPhone does not give Apple or Google any more control over your mail than RIM have if you use a BlackBerry: in every case, your server holds the mail, it goes over the Net encrypted. BES doesn't offer anything special in this respect at all."
Not so. With BES you get to choose your own keys, you never tell RIM what they are and RIM only ever get to hold encrypted versions of your email. With Google and Apple it's the complete opposite. Google in particular want (nay, *need*) your emails in the clear so that they can enhance their advertising brokerage business. Same for Apple. Direct from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4865
"All traffic between your devices and iCloud Mail and Notes is encrypted with SSL. Consistent with standard industry practice, iCloud does not encrypt data stored on IMAP mail servers. All Apple email clients support optional S/MIME encryption."
Why do you think there are so many email encryption packages being marketed for Android and iOS? They're all a little bit naff because they're layered on top of the OS instead of being built right in (like Blackberry do).
Not that I've got anything in particular against US law. It seems that we could do with some of their legal penalties to be on our statute books too, and perhaps the LIBOR scandal wouldn't have happened. However, US prosecutors have used their Wire Fraud act to convict British businessmen for business practises that are entirely legal outside of the US (online betting, certain accounting practises and financial transactions, and so forth). The Wire Fraud act and modern communications technology gives US law an international dimension that simply didn't exist before. Couple that with dodgy extradition agreements, prosecutors on bonus schemes and the distasteful practise of plea bargaining and it adds up to a stinky mess that can ensnare the unwary.
But having to deal with all that when your company is solely UK based just because it chose iPhone or Android seems, well, disproportionate...
> if you need high security then Windows Phone has a similar clean record to Blackberry
for the same reasons that the Linux desktop has such a clean record - hardly anyone uses it, so the malware writers have no incentive to develop for it.
Angels-dancing-on pin question - the the WP market share bigger or smaller than the desktop Linux market share? It's hard to compare these dang small numbers with the margin of error that exists in the statistics.
I see what you did there: You took the piss out of WinPho [thus earning automatic upvotes from commentardery at large], but did it through the medium of comparing WP's sorry usage figures to those of the beloved Linux [thus meriting equally-automatic downvotes].
Upvote from me for the mental image of commentards wavering endlessly between upvote and downvote buttons, wailing "Does not compute!", with smoke pouring from their ears.
If RIM get the heck out of hardware, concentrate on software and services and bring the BB security goodness to Android, IOS et al, they will survive. They may even grow.
If they persist in keeping the BB system proprietary to them, the competition will eventually catch up and they will die.
The Blackberry Bold 9900 is one of the best feeling, best handling phones on the market - the build quality is really impressive, and the keyboard cannot be beat. As long as BB produce hardware of that quality, I hope they don't take your advice. I have an iPad for "apps", what I need is a small, light phone that is built like a tank and can send good email...and the Bold is currently the best out there for that.
"His note apparently triggered a five per cent jump in RIM's share price, though ever-confident public statements from CEO Thorsten Heins may also have played their part."
This is why the economy is in the crapper. Stock prices are not set by actual company performance. They are affected by spin and ill-conceived "optimism" rather than earnings statements and actual performance. No better than pump-and-dump schemes.
I'd certainly give RIM a better shot than MS. The playbook talks directly to Exchange so hopefully the new BB10 handsets will do with the Blackberry server stuff optional. If they have some guts they'd turn BBM into a skype competitor too they just need to cross platform it. No-one else seems willing to compete with them but RIM with a still large install base and relatively enthusiastic following could.
@AndyMulhearn,
"If the playbook loses the ability to go direct to email servers without BIS/BES in the way when the BB10 upgrade comes out"
I don't know what the 4G Playbook (I wish they'd sell it in the UK!) does at the moment. Presumably it could operate through a BIS or BES in the same way a phone does, with RIM's famously battery efficient push notification system. I presume that it can also talk direct to servers in the way the WiFi Playbook does.
If so, that might indicate RIM's intended direction. However, given that the software to talk direct is already in existence and is already running on WiFi Playbooks which are already running OS2.0 (a.k.a. BB10 prelude) it would be astonishingly easy for RIM to leave it in place, so perhaps they might.
Anyway, what's wrong with going through a BIS? It's effectively transparent from the user's point of view, and on their phones is essential (unless you have your own BES) for their very good push notification system. Apart from their little whoopsie a year or so back RIM are pretty good. In the round they've been much more reliable than the multiple cock ups Apple have had (anyone remember how bad MobileMe was?).
Heins has proclaimed BB10 on Playbooks after BB10 on phones; and that it will run on all Playbooks issued.
What does that mean, exactly? That BB10 will be on Playbook for Christmas? NEXT year's Christmas?
The Crackberry site is awash with speculated dates. February? 3rd Quarter? June?
Rumour has it there are two devices, one leaked as a largish phone. Is this the Galaxy Note II-killer the world has been waiting for?
RIM is increasingly looking like a smartphone one-trick pony in competition with 3 huge and diversified providers Apple, Google, and MS; with phones, computers, laptops, tablets, clouds.
I last used a BlackBerry device in 2011, and the only reason I stopped was because the Samsung Galaxy S2 looked so impressive.
Since then, I've gone through 4 phones (Galaxy S2, Samsung Omnia 7, Galaxy S, Alcatel OneTouch) and none of these phones fill me with the confidence that the BlackBerry handset delivered. I sincerely hope that these BB10 devices are the ones to restore confidence in BlackBerry's again. There is still a place for BlackBerry hardware in the workplace, as a physical QWERTY keyboard is just far superior to anything being offered by Apple, Android and Windows at the moment.
He is undoubtedly correct that you can obtain products that render your "whatever OS" to the same level of security and application menu as the BlackBerry., etc. etc.
But, like many of the BlackBerry 80 million global subscribers I am not as smart as he is. Hence I/we lapse into permitting RIM to exploit the convenience of letting them do it all for us.
No disputing that RIM lost the plot, alienated millions in their US market and under-delivered, especially on deadlines. But 80 million people, many as naive as myself, imply that given a faultless launch of BB10, Misek could be right.
Of course, I shall not be giving up my iPhone; my wife needs that to transfer photographs from her BB Curve, so that she can view them on a decent screen.
From the stability point of view. It is always freezing for seconds, sometimes tens of seconds. I have to reboot it daily. Build quality is pretty good.
The only ay I can see myself staying with BB (I also have an N8 that I am moving over to.) is if they provide an OS update to the new OS for my phone.
I doubt that will happen.
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