BlackBerry ads 'misleading`

By Rodney Weidemann for LayerOne
Johannesburg, 31 Mar 2005

The marketing campaign for the BlackBerry service can be seen as misleading to the public, which is causing confusion in the marketplace and will make life difficult for corporate companies and those involved in the installation and support of the product.

This is the view of Stuart Hardy, MD of LayerOne, an Internet Solutions subsidiary and a BlackBerry systems integrator that provides BlackBerry system installations for both MTN and Vodacom corporate clients.

"While the BlackBerry service is good, the way it is being marketed can be misleading to people, as consumers who purchase the service may not be able to get access to their primary e-mail accounts such as their company e-mail," he says.

"Most consumers in SA have one e-mail account which is their corporate e-mail, and this is the e-mail that they would like to have access to when they are on the move, whether it is to receive business or personal e-mail.

"Accessing this e-mail from a BlackBerry device will only be possible if the company that they work for has adopted a strategy to allow the use of BlackBerry in their organisation and has deployed the BlackBerry business enterprise server (BES), which can have high cost implications for a corporate company not only in software charges but hardware and administration as well.

"If the corporate decides not to adopt a BlackBerry strategy then the consumer may be unable to access their work e-mail. Of course they will be able to access an e-mail account provided to them by the network which is only valuable if you never had one in the first place, because it will be an e-mail address that nobody knows."

He says consumers need to be made aware that they should talk to the company they work for before investing in a BlackBerry, as without the support of the company they may not be able to get the benefit they expect.

"We are seeing people buying the device and then going to their company and saying they want access to their corporate e-mail, only to discover that the business either doesn`t have or want a BlackBerry environment," says Hardy.

"Companies are also going to come under increasing pressure from consumers to adopt the strategy because of their purchase, and this has cost implications for organisations.

"The BlackBerry solution is practical when supported by an organisation and for that reason we believe the purchase of such services should be driven by an organisation and not a consumer if the consumer wants to access corporate e-mail," he says.

"Ultimately, if you are going to spend a lot of money on a device, you must make sure what you are buying is relevant, and that you get the return that you expect."

Mobile operator Vodacom recently issued a statement that says it is possible to access corporate e-mail on the device, provided the user links their corporate e-mail to the BlackBerry Internet service.

However, it does warn that users that do this without the BES will not experience the same level of synchronisation as they otherwise would.