BlackBerry to take you “beyond e-mail”
HARDLY anybody in SA uses a BlackBerry, but its developer, Research In Motion, is working hard to turn this into a nation of CrackBerrys — the nickname given to users addicted to the device.
Its MD of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Charmaine Eggberry, is spending an intensive six days in SA meeting corporate customers and potential customers and discussing distribution strategies with Vodacom and MTN.
She is also negotiating for the network operators to sell BlackBerry handsets and services through their networks in other countries. MTN is already selling BlackBerrys in Nigeria and has committed to introduce them elsewhere once it believes there is sufficient demand for these more sophisticated mobile services.
A typical package from Vodacom give users a BlackBerry as part of a Talk 500 contract for R899 a month, after a R97 connection fee.
Eggberry will not say whether she is negotiating with SA’s far smaller network operators Cell C and Virgin Mobile yet. But as number portability encourages more high-end users to switch networks, it is natural for the smaller players in any country to ask for the right to sell BlackBerry services, she says.
Eggberry will not specify how may people in SA are using the BlackBerry or accessing its services through other handsets such as the higher-range Nokia models. But Europe, the Middle East and Africa comprise Research In Motion’s fastest-growing territory, and its sales outside the US now account for 33% of its revenue.
“I see an enormous amount of opportunity here and we fully intend to capitalise on that,” she says. “You will see a lot more of us in this marketplace. I don’t want growth — I want hyper-growth.”
Research In Motion posted a revenue of $3bn for the year to March 3, up 47% from $2,1bn the previous year. It serves 8-million customers and works with 275 telecoms operators in 110 countries, generating a net profit of $634m.
The company took five years to persuade a million people that the nattily named new gadget was actually useful as well as a novelty. People caught on more quickly after that, with another million signing up over 10 months. In the past three-month period, another million joined its fans.
Yet of the 1-billion cellphones sold last year, it accounted for only 6,4-million. There are plenty of people still to have their first taste of BlackBerrys, Eggberry says, and for the current financial quarter it aims to add 1,1-million more customers.
The handsets have come a long way since their first clunky versions, which saw technology journalists who tested the device hand it back in frustration. The latest model is the small, sleek Pearl, with a digital camera, multimedia features and an expandable memory slot to store music, video and pictures. It can operate on four different wireless technologies and has a “qwerty” keypad layout for easier typing.
At its heart is the original “push-based” e-mail service that delivers messages to you, instead of you logging on to retrieve them.
“The Pearl was launched three weeks ago to broaden people’s perceptions of what BlackBerry is,” says Eggberry. “There is a common misconception that it’s only about e-mail. We need to educate the marketplace that it’s not about e-mail on the mobile phone — there is an entire world of technology out there that people haven’t experienced yet.”
As numerous rivals snap at its heels, the company believes it can hang on to its leadership and grow even more dominant by coming up with more offerings that it dubs “beyond e-mail”.
It has partnered with 650 IT companies that are developing applications or accessories for the devices, including the German software giant SAP. Those partnerships let users access the same applications on the move as they have on their desktop, much as they could with a heavier and less portable laptop computer, and without the need to find a wireless hot spot to get on line.
As a result, 70% of its corporate customers now use the devices to access other applications. Paramedics in Spain use them to enter details about a patient into a central database, so when they reach the hospital the medics already know what treatment is required. Half the police forces in the UK are using or testing BlackBerrys to access criminal records on the spot when they make an arrest or report a crime.
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