Neil Hughes
With a belief that Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry is in its death throes, major corporations and organizations continue to transition their employees away from the platform, with the latest discontinuation coming from pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
The world's largest drug-maker recently sent out a memo to employees referring to BlackBerry's "volatile state," and recommending that workers plan to migrate to Apple's iPhone or a device running Google's Android platform once their current contract expires. Pfizer has 90,000 employees, with a "huge" portion of those using BlackBerry, according to sources who spoke with AllThingsD.
Pfizer is just the latest company to abandon BlackBerry as the struggling smartphone maker continues to wither away. Prior to the arrival of the iPhone and Android devices, BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion, was the dominant company among enterprise and government users.
The company recently and unsuccessfully attempted to sell off its assets, gaining interest from tech giants including Apple, Microsoft and Lenovo. But companies were each said to be interested in BlackBerry's patents, not the company's hardware division or existing customer base.
But the BlackBerry Board of Directors decided against breaking up and selling the struggling company piecemeal. It also turned down a takeover bid from Fairfax Capital.
The company's former CEO Thorsten Heins resigned earlier this month, allowing former Sybase Chief Executive John Chen to take over the reins of BlackBerry. Since becoming BlackBerry CEO, Chen has attempted to convey to customers that his company has "significant financial strength for the long haul," and has pledged to "rebuild BlackBerry for the benefit of all our constituencies."
Last month, BlackBerry was forced to lay off 40 percent of its workforce — cuts so massive that they gained the attention of Apple and Intel, which held recruiting fairs near the company's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario.
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38 Comments
Headline is about Pfizer, article is about blackberry. WTF.
My employer just announced the iPhone is now the official phone, another 25,000 iPhones sold.
"With a belief that Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry is in its death throes, major corporations and organizations continue to transition their employees away from the platform, with the latest discontinuation coming from pharmaceutical company Pfizer." For Blackberry, the loss of pharmaceutical company Pfizer must be a bitter pill to swallow! ;~/ [I][ Note to self: I apologize but fully expect that hitting "submit" will post this reply twice... but if I try to delete the unintended second post, I end up with four, FFS! ][/I]
My employer just announced the iPhone is now the official phone, another 25,000 iPhones sold.
25,000 iphones... that's a smidge over 90 minutes of total iPhone sales (Last quarter, Apple sold 16,000 iPhones an hour... 7x24)
People. Corporate phones are not the big market. While it will allow people to carry one phone instead of 2, corporations are 'followers' in the mobile market (as opposed to leaders back in the PC and Laptop days).
While Pfizer moving off of Blackberry is big news for blackberry (one more artery of sales just closed off), it's ho-hum for Apple... 90K is the morning quota for Foxconn today.
The good news is that as pfizer goes, so does it's supply chain, which probably rivals Apple. Every person who has to get a BES message to be notified of a shortage of raw materials for Viagra now will be able to consider a non-BBM phone for the work... again, relieving them of the 2 phone issue (or the BlackBerry iPad Duality). And Pfizer employees, families etc, are solidly in Apple's financial demographic, and so are their neighbors.
Why is this a big deal... TheOtherGeoff's Corollary to Metcalf's Law... The value of a mobile ecosystem grows by the square of the iDevices connecting to that ecosystem, raised by the purchasing power of their owner. If Corporations are people;-), they earn a lot of money per iPhone, and will tend to invest in their ecosystem to exploit it to make more money. This will bode well for the ITMS/iOS/iCloud and all the developers who build iOS first.
It's not about technology, it's about protecting the own business. Guys with Blackberries don't get the girl and don't need the blue pill. Horizontals and verticals together at last.