Apple takes well-aimed jabs at RIM/Blackberry

During last week's Enterprise/SDK Event, Steve Jobs and Co. took a few jabs at the #1 Enterprise smartphone maker, RIM. Here's how it went down.

During the first few minutes of the presentation, Steve Jobs showed the U.S. SmartPhone Marketshare from the big manufacturers.

RIM 41%
Apple 28%
No one else even in double digits. Apple isn't too worried about Windows Mobile or Symbian at this point. This is Apple vs. RIM.

Next, Phil Shiller, Apple SVP of Marketing, dug into Blackberry/RIM by showing the inherit design advantages of ActivSync vs RIM's design. RIM wasn't mentioned by name but the point is certainly clear. No other device uses this mail delivery architecture - unless you consider Good Technologies, which was recently bought by Motorola and carries very little marketshare.

"[These devices] do get push e-mail and push calendaring and contacts, and you think that they come from the servers in the [enterprise] environment, but they don't. They first come from a network operations center that's outside your firewall, it's even outside the country for most people. That adds risk to reliability, as we've seen from time to time,"

Schiller mentioned that this Network Operations Center (NOC) is usually outside the country - meaning in Canada. While being in Canada isn't a huge concern for most American companies, certain U.S. (and French) government agencies might want to keep their email communications "in-house". Their vendors and contractors might also be strongly encouraged to do the same. Right there is a few marketshare points.

The overall point is a strong one. More hops equals slower mail devilery (theoretically at least). More importantly, it also equals more points of failure - which RIM has been kind enough to demonstrate a few times over the last year. The question isn't, "why is this being shown now?"...it is "why haven't any of Microsoft's ActiveSync licencees been trumpeting these advantages as much?" Apple does know how to pinpoint its advantages.

At the end of the event, Jobs took a direct shot at RIM, saying,

"Every e-mail goes through a NOC [network operations center] up in Canada. That provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation, where someone working up at that NOC could be potentially having a little look at your e-mail. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are. We think that a direct connection could be a little more secure."

Ouch, planting that seed inside the CEO's head and installing some paranoia isn't exactly an above the belt jab but it is effective.

The point is that for Exchange servers, ActiveSync is a better arcitecture than RIM's. RIM created it's architecture before ActiveSync even existed and its "workaround" architecture is a function of that. It is a testimate to RIM that it has, thus far, been able to dominate the market with this workaround method of email delivery.

I don't expect Apple to eat into RIM's marketshare very quickly either. Corporate IT departments are notoriously (and rightfully) slow at adopting new technologies. They have also spent huge amounts for Blackberry Enterprise Servers (BES), Client access licenses (CALs), training and the handsets that go along.

However, for companies that don't have an existing Blackberry Infrastructure, the iPhone with ActiveSync is a very tempting option.