Gartner released a new report citing possible hiccups, problems and disadvantages for current enterprises that are planning to update their enterprise solution to BB10. There are multiple effective enterprise solutions offered by rival platforms like iOS and Android right now and it would be wise for enterprises to wait it out before they give a commitment to BB10 platform which is still not up to the mark. Relying purely on enterprise markets is dangerous for any platform’s growth and so is it for BlackBerry. The coming 6 months will prove how strong BackBerry will perform in general consumer market and seal the fate of its future as a competing OS. With many enterprises and government organisations already moving to alternate platforms Gartner predicts that BlackBerry might not be able to hold on a marketshare greater than 5% by 2016.
Many enterprises are currently encouraging BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) program by supporting all the famous mobile platforms with their enterprise mobile solutions. BlackBerry’s BB10 platform is going to launch their BES service soon for iOS and Android to make it more attractive for enterprises to upgrade to BB10 but a major issue with their current offering is lack of API options for third party MDM tools (master data management). Currently the only MDM option for BB10 devices is BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 which is a restrictive offering range compared to other older solutions.
Though Gartner feels that BlackBerry will not be able to compete against Android, iOS and Windows Mobile, BlackBerry’s CEO feels the other way round. Thorsten Heins feels that iOS might have been good at the time of launch but it looks dusted and beaten and failed to innovate since the past few years. He feels that the current offering from BlackBerry is more advanced that iOS and will definitely make a good mark in the market.