BlackBerry Messenger to launch on Android, iOS this weekend

Re: Something for the kiddies

@Khaptain,

"I have never even considered that it was even possible to connect directly to an Exchange server from a BB terminal.."

Yes it is, and a whole load of other email server types too. Mine's bolted onto Hotmail (or whatever it's called these days) too.

Plus, BB Balance allows you to do a neat trick. The phone implements a Multi-Level Security System, and I've had to do a lot of reading to glean what follows from that. [Alas I've not got a company phone, nor my own BES, so I've not been able to try it out myself]

So, as I understand it, one level is "personal", and can be joined to your own email, Exchange, Facebook, Twitter, and can have it's own apps, calendars, contacts, the lot.

The other level is "company", and is joined to your company's BES server, has its own email, apps, calendars, contacts, the lot. The company has full control of that level, they can install apps, setup email, wipe data remotely.

The clever bit is that nothing in the company level can be interact with the personal level, nor can anything from the personal level interact with the company level. Personal apps can't nick company data. Company apps can't see personal data. That provides assurance to the company that their data is safe, but you can still do your own personal thing knowing that your boss can't see. The company can even remote wipe their level in the phone, but they can't touch the personal level at all.

And the really clever bit is that apps like the Calendar and Contacts sit above both levels and can see down into them. For example, that means that you can see both your company and personal calendar when arranging a meeting, but your company can't see your personal calendar at all.

What's more, all that's got some pretty good approvals from various bits of the US and UK governments. That probably means that it's quite strong (though of course recent events might have dented that inference somewhat...).

You need Z10, Q10 and so on to be able to do all this; older Blackberries won't, and I think that the company needs to upgrade to the latest BES too. There might be money involved in doing all that, which might put off a company from upgrading.

It'd be interesting to know if your company has heard of BB Balance.

Re: Something for the kiddies

@Seven Seas Jim,

"All that is very nice... but BlackBerry has failed to advertize and promote these advantages and features. They make great phones but don't know how to sell them."

Well, I think you're fairly right on that front, but I think no marketing campaign would ever be able to convey exactly what it is that might make a BB phone a good choice.

Part of Blackberry's problem (in my humble opinion) is that quite a lot of their really good technology is unmatched by everyone else. A BB phone is not a clone of anything else, it stands apart in quite a lot of important areas. So, when you show an iOS user a BB phone, there is not a lot in their previous experiences to tell them what a BB phone can do. You have to explain the Blackberryness to them from scratch.

For example, Apple have educated everyone to expect some sort of a home button. Android copied that idea. Blackberry didn't put one on, they did something different; a bezel swipe gesture that works no matter which way up you're holding the phone. It saves you having to hunt for the damned button, and also saves surface area (you don't need to find room for a physical button), and thus has quite a lot of benefits. It also stops the phone looking long and thin and means the screen can fill the whole frontage, unlike the iPhone 5 for example.

As for marketing, they have advertised things like Blackberry Balance, but you have to look at it all really hard to really understand exactly what Blackberry Balance is and why you might want it. That doesn't even begin to fit into a 30sec ad, never mind impart the true essence of that particular thing to someone who has never seen anything like it before.

So I think that BB are sort of in a Betamax vs VHS situation; in many ways they're arguably far superior to everyone else, but most people don't understand why so don't bother looking. Instead BB have to rely on users who have a pressing need for something different and are thus motivated to thoroughly explore what BB actually have on offer. Most of the 'deficiencies' of a BB phone (a lack of apps is the most common observation) would be easily fixed if they had mass market appeal; software devs would eagerly write the apps for the thing.

I think that BB themselves recognised this problem some time ago, which is why they said then that they'd be focusing primarily on the corporate market hoping that they at least could be bothered to read the literature properly. Instead it seems that the corporate market is itself largely committing data-security suicide by being happy with staff using their own phones.

It's a pity, because BB's Balance is the ideal solution to that problem. I'm pretty sure that most companies have no idea that Balance allows company data security to be assured whilst letting the user do whatever the hell they like with their own messaging, games, etc.