
Defense Department drops exclusive contract for BlackBerry - eplanit
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57543397-94/defense-department-drops-exclusive-contract-for-blackberry/
======
rdl
It's pretty amazing how much Blackberry has lost the enterprise market in the
first world, while retaining the low end "feature phone with a keyboard"
market in the third world, over the past few years. It's rare that the
enterprise market moves faster than consumers, but that seems to be what's
happening.

Unfortunately there's basically no buyout value to the international business
(Nokia is even stronger for that, although they lack a good keyboard); Android
(and to some extent Windows Phone and iPhone) will eventually win there.

The Enterprise market, particularly the BES and management side, had value to
buyout, even just as a best-in-class MDM solution to manage Android, iPhone,
etc., but they waited too long to open up their management, and from what I've
seen, Airwatch, Zenprise, Good, etc. are all better choices for crossplatform
MDM.

~~~
OoTheNigerian
I do not mean to comment out of point, however, I just want to point out that
to me, there seems to be 'something' about branding a part of the world 1st
World and another 3rd World.

"Developed countries" and "Developing countries" seem better terms to describe
the infrastructural distinctions.

~~~
archangel_one
Well, it originally came out of the Cold War, so I guess there is definitely
something a little weird about it. Personally I don't really care for
"developed" either though; it implies to me that those countries have achieved
some peak of civilisation and don't need to change any more, which plainly
isn't the case.

It's probably more pejorative than "third world", but "rich" and "poor" are
probably clearer descriptions for a discussion of cellphone usage patterns
than most of these euphemisms. That'd upset people even more, of course :)

~~~
redcap
You could perhaps look at "developing" in terms of economic growth - most
"developed" countries have relatively low growth as their economies are
mature.

That's not to say that all countries with low growth have mature economies of
course, just that "developed" countries are at the economic forefront, and
that "developing" countries need to make an effort to catch up or be forever
"developing".

In terms that most people could understand "rich" and "poor" may be more
accurate, but in terms of cell phone usage there are quite a few African
countries that have widespread mobile phone networks, but few wired
telephones.

You could perhaps come to think that the above sort of labels are very
generic, but I do think that for a start that talk of a third world/first
world split is not useful when the second world - communist russia and its ilk
- doesn't exist anymore.

------
tangue
What are these people doing with their phones ?! _U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency ... said the reason was because RIM's smartphone could not
keep up with its needs._ Are Apple Business solutions really viable ?

I don't understand if there is a valuable reason for that or if it's just
change for the sake of change. My 3 years old Blackberry fulfills all my
needs. And it was made in Canada, not in a Foxconn-like plant.

~~~
mseebach2
BBs suck hard at everything but emails, call, texts and BBM. It's browser and
map apps are appalling - and both are completely reasonable to count as
"needs" in 2012.

> And it was made in Canada, not in a Foxconn-like plant.

They're not made in Canada anymore.

------
rsingla
Would this count as the final blow to the zombie that is BlackBerry?

~~~
daliusd
Startups news site bashing struggling company? Stay classy HN.

~~~
bryne
Struggling startups get a pass on HN. Struggling companies that were at the
top of the food chain and tumbled to the bottom through hubris and a failure
to innovate don't.

~~~
daliusd
IMHO RIM is really innovative company now.

------
batgaijin
Oh thank god. That's an insane handicap today.

