In the news is the fact that US President-elect Barack Obama wants to keep his Blackberry when he becomes president. This must be worth a fortune in advertising to Blackberry manufacturer RIM and indeed their share price seems to have risen quite healthily this week.
The secret service is of course concerned about the Presidential email security and I will happily leave it to both parties to argue it out. What is of interest is why the Blackberry? Why not an alternative email device such as a PDA or Nokia Smartphone.
I used to have a Blackberry but moved onto Nokia, primarily because the Nokia E-Series had a SIP Stack that would allow me to play with VoIP on mobiles. The Nokia’s were more of a phone as well rather than a clunky data device.
The Blackberry has moved on since then and a quick survey of the Tech Support team suggests that it now has the edge in terms of features and ease of use. There is now even a Facebook plug-in for blackberry.
Certainly from a commercial perspective the mobile operators are doing a very good job at incentivising service providers to sell Blackberry as opposed to alternative mobile email solutions.
What is really exciting is the pace of development in the mobile handset world. Competition is really working here driving features up and pricing down.