blog National carrier Qantas has reportedly confirmed plans to ditch some 1,300 corporate BlackBerrys and replace them with iPhones, as the ongoing corporate shift away from Research in Motion’s BlackBerry ecosystem gains pace. The Australian newspaper reports this morning (we recommend you click here for the full article):
“AUSTRALIA’S flagship carrier Qantas will replace its entire fleet of BlackBerry devices with Apple iPhones, a move that presents more headaches for struggling handset maker Research In Motion.”
The news comes several weeks after analyst house IDC revealed that 40 percent of Australian enterprises now see the iPhone as their preferred staff smartphone model. A number of major Australian organisations have also recently confirmed a shift onto Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform with Nokia hardware.
I can’t say I’m surprised by this move by Qantas — and I won’t be surprised to see similar moves by other major Australian organisations shortly. Is your company dumping the BlackBerry? Drop us a line through our anonymous tips form. Even we won’t know who you are.
Image credit: Research in Motion
Before I left Fairfax they were about to start dumping Blackberry, where I work now only has one or two people with Blackberry devices. I actually laughed at the ads for the latest Blackberry highlighting the fact it can email quickly & you can see what service a message came in via. Isn’t they features that everyone’s had for years?
Watch data costs rise exponentially for these companies.
mind you, as BB10 will be active-sync based their new product wont be any different.
Data costs?
As far as I can tell; you need to pay 10-15 dollars per month extra on your phone plan to get BES access as it is. (on top of paying for the BES server and licenses at the enterprise). Not to mention wasting techies time managing/monitoring the BES system.
Near as I can tell, total cost of ownership of a blackberry + plan has always been higher than an iPhone (or other activesync phone) from an enterprise perspective. Now they can either push that money into a higher data cap (which these days come with 1-3 gb depending on the plan). Or save it. Cut the cost of infrastructure, cut the cost of maintenance, and buy a phone (be it android or apple) that people might actually want.
I’ve had power users do world trips with ipads and sucking down in excess of $30k worth of data.
Granted its not the same class of device, but the data abuse of active sync is way more open than the BB world.
I’m not arguing for BB’s I’m just listing one of the reasons Active Sync devices are not good for roaming environments.
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