Blackberry is still the sweetest

ComputerWeekly writes that "corporate users are still buying Research In Motion's Blackberry service in massive numbers, despite widespread prior awareness of Microsoft and Vodafone's plans to launch a rival push e-mail service early this year."

Forrester analyst Ellen Daley commented "Blackberry was still the most complete service at the moment, despite the doubts raised by RIM's patent dispute in the US." She said, "All the uncertainty surrounding the NTP/RIM court battles does not diminish the fact that RIM's Blackberry device and service is the optimal user experience for wireless e-mail on the market today."

Daley pointed out that "the downside of the Microsoft service was the fact that only limited carrier-certified devices were currently available, with only the Vodafone service confirmed as becoming available in March." She added, "Expect more in the first half of 2006. RIM has had some limited success in making the Blackberry a mobile application platform, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses."

She expected "Microsoft would prove more viable in the long run because it offers an operating system that is familiar to business users, and the .net development environment is relatively easy to use compared with RIM's non-standard Java system." Daley remarked, "RIM/Blackberry will still offer the best wireless e-mail experience available in terms of usability."

Todd Kort at Gartner concurred saying that "Blackberry users were generally "staying put" for the moment because of the high costs of switching, the lack of suitable alternative devices, and the low probability of Blackberry's service being shut down."