BlackBerry's New in Town

For those of you who don't know, technology evangelism runs in our family. My parents own an IT infrastructure/consulting firm and I grew up in this environment where people were trying to fix a lot of every-day enterprise problems by using various technologies, primarily on the Microsoft front (Go check out www.datasistem.com.tr, but I guess they don't have an English site anymore!).

While I'm back in Istanbul for my first ever vacation from work, I've been hanging out with the old man. I usually prefer to just meet with customers and listen to what's going on in the industry. One very good aspect of these visits is that I get to meet a lot of CxOs (buzzword - networking!). But the best part is I get the chance to talk to them about the new/different technologies they use within their Enterprise. I usually prefer to converse with people higher up in the food chain, because most often they are the ones who decided to go forward with the chosen technology. No offense to anybody, but unfortunately the IT personnel is often grumpy and they don't like to enjoy these technologies from an engineering/innovation point of view.

Also, my dad has a very unique sense of humor. I mean it's really awkward when you're visiting your father's customers and while they are demoing the iPAQs the customer turns over to me and begs me to fix their BES. He didn't take me there to teach me how to sell, he knew that they were having problems with their BlackBerries. Half the meeting revolved along the lines of "Hey look, this guy works at RIM, he built that thing you're holding!"

So, guess what? The latest hype in Turkey is on the smartphone front. BlackBerry entered the market around Summer of 2006 and now HP is pushing forward with its new iPAQ Voice Messengers. Both the BlackBerry and Windows Mobile sides have their pros and cons (NO, BlackBerry doesn't have cons!) - but for the sake of simplicity I will assume that they all have the same features - push email, synchronization, phone, Internet browsing, etc. So what do people make their final decisions on? From all the people I've talked recently, the winning answer, by far, is "which ever just works".

Wait a minute, so BlackBerry should be ahead by two touchdowns and a field goal! After all BlackBerry just works! Apparently it doesn't and what's worse is this has nothing to do with BlackBerry not working. The apparent market penetration strategy so far - from what I have heard from several of these CxOs - is Turkcell says here are 10 - 15 8800s for free and here is BES, go install and evaluate, we'll see if you like it within a couple of months. Guess what? The local IT crew can't setup the BES properly so your BlackBerry gets all the Service Books except for CMIME which turns out to be your Exchange email Service Book. So they call up Turkcell's customer support and the only answer they know to solve this problem is to say "Open up your BES settings and click on 'Send Service Books'". Give me a fucking break!

And guess which side Data Sistem is on? Of course, they are going to push harder to sell the iPAQs to customers who've already started using BlackBerries. On the Windows side, they have the power to at least setup a system that "just works", plus they will make a ton of money on extra consulting and the device sales. After all the dark side aligns better with their business. So their new plot goes like this

Customer: I heard you're son's working at RIM, too bad our BES doesn't work - do you think he can come over and fix this thing?

Dad: Hey, we actually have these new HP thingys that actually works perfect - We'll setup it up for you to test AND it's going to cost you less - you don't have to pay for BES with Exchange 2007!

RIM, on the other hand, has only the next few months - OK I give them (us?) until the end of next summer - to fix their strategies and to gain a faithful customer base. It's not going to be easy! I know that we - as RIM - don't have that many subscribers yet in Turkey but as everybody acknowledges there is great potential to expand. What that means is, we have to make sure that we have to provide a smoother experience than any Windows Mobile solution. It has to work even if these are evaluation units. We have to continue giving the world class customer support that we're proud of. Unfortunately I don't see any future for BlackBerry in Turkey - not if we're not going to put in the effort.

PS: It's really awkward to talk about RIM in third person - in the R&D groups, we rarely hear about the marketing side of things.