Comments on: Weekly Contest: Business and Pleasure http://www.blackberrycool.com/2007/11/16/weekly-contest-business-and-pleasure/ The voice of the BlackBerry community. Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:42:37 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Kyle S. http://www.blackberrycool.com/2007/11/16/weekly-contest-business-and-pleasure/comment-page-1/#comment-210059 Kyle S. Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:43:03 +0000 http://blackberrycool.com/2007/11/16/006078/#comment-210059 In my opinion, the existing differentiations between corporate and consumer users work pretty well in terms of what can be done with either. For example, though my father, who turned me on to Blackberries to begin with, owns a small business, he doesn't use enterprise features with his company and opts instead to simply use personal plans for the employees. However, due to the highly collective culture in larger companies, it may be important to have certain enterprise features such as limits on applications or the ability to send out messages to every user in the company via the BES. Though these features are and should be advanced more on the corporate front than the consumer front, no consumer can generally tell by looking when a business executive is using a limited blackberry and thus, they still retain their status as status symbols in the corporate world. Though I think that the current differentiation is important, the focus in the future, in terms of functionality, should be towards wide availability. What I mean by this is that if a new feature is available for corporate users or BES, I think it should be available for consumers as well, though possibly in a different form. I think that Blackberry Unite is a really HUGE step towards this. For example, when it comes to limiting or disabling applications, I don't see a consumer wanting to do that, but if a family used Blackberry Unite, I can see parents wanting to limit their kids a bit. But overall, I feel that RIM is headed for success balancing the two on their current path. In my opinion, the existing differentiations between corporate and consumer users work pretty well in terms of what can be done with either. For example, though my father, who turned me on to Blackberries to begin with, owns a small business, he doesn’t use enterprise features with his company and opts instead to simply use personal plans for the employees. However, due to the highly collective culture in larger companies, it may be important to have certain enterprise features such as limits on applications or the ability to send out messages to every user in the company via the BES. Though these features are and should be advanced more on the corporate front than the consumer front, no consumer can generally tell by looking when a business executive is using a limited blackberry and thus, they still retain their status as status symbols in the corporate world.

Though I think that the current differentiation is important, the focus in the future, in terms of functionality, should be towards wide availability. What I mean by this is that if a new feature is available for corporate users or BES, I think it should be available for consumers as well, though possibly in a different form. I think that Blackberry Unite is a really HUGE step towards this. For example, when it comes to limiting or disabling applications, I don’t see a consumer wanting to do that, but if a family used Blackberry Unite, I can see parents wanting to limit their kids a bit. But overall, I feel that RIM is headed for success balancing the two on their current path.

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