Many people think of the Blackberry SmartPhone as the ultimate business phone and it has been that way for some time but now it looks like the iPhone might be presenting a serious challenge.
The Standard Chartered bank has offered all of its corporate employees the chance to dump their Blackberry mobiles and take an iPhone instead.
“It’s a group-wide initiative involving wholesale and consumer banks globally” an unnamed Singapore-based spokeswoman for Standard Chartered, told Reuters, although there was no mention of how long it would take to complete the switchover.
At the moment it is Research in Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry phone that is the standard issue phone for workers at banks and other financial institutions but this move by Standard Chartered could see all banks switch, so Apple could literally be laughing all the way to the bank.
Lu Chialin, an IT industry analyst at Macquarie Securities in Taipei told Reuters “if more companies switch to the iPhone, this is of course bad news for RIM”.
“However, it will take a long time for companies to do their own internal testing [of iPhones] before deciding to change, so it will be a while before it has any effect on RIM” said Chialin.
I don’t agree, I think it’s bound to be having a negative impact on RIM right now, even if only psychologically, however, RIM seem to be playing it down.
“People are always switching. I saw there were people switching to BlackBerries as well” Gregory Shea, RIM’s China managing director told Reuters.
“I think the point is it’s a very dynamic market. There are many very imaginative companies out there. Service providers, vendors, software application developers, very dynamic” he said.
According to the Reuter’s report, Singapore’s overseas Chinese Banking Corp offered their employees a choice between a Blackberry and an iPhone last year.
“This initiative is not intended to replace the BlackBerry. Rather, we want to provide our colleagues with another option to access their office email and sync their contacts, notes and calendar while on the move” Peter Koh, head of technology infrastructure at OCBC told Reuters.
“Our colleagues can continue to enjoy the features and content available on their iPhone without the hassle of carrying another device in order to access office email” he said.
I think what is happening is the iPhone has become an all singing all dancing device suitable for both business and private use whereas the Blackberry still doesn’t appeal too much to the everyday consumer.
