Once the darling of IT departments and business-minded consumers the world over, Research in Motion is currently suffering from an image problem.
Even as the BlackBerry device-maker tries to dazzle its corporate consumer base with a completely refreshed operating system, some of the biggest BlackBerry fans -- corporate IT departments -- have already moved on.
"The fact is, nobody likes it anymore," says a senior systems administrator for a New York investment research firm, who asked to remain anonymous.
The administrator has seen BlackBerry usage within his company drop to less than half of what it was at its peak. The largest group of previous users, his firm's sales team, have been the quickest to walk away from the platform.
"They don't like using technology that they feel is old because they feel that reflects negatively on them in front of clients," he says.
Waterloo, Ontario-based Research In Motion enjoyed great success throughout the last decade with its BlackBerry smartphone hardware and software, which proved to be a gigantic hit in the buttoned-down business world -- and not to mention, a cash cow for the creator. But now RIM teeters on the verge of collapse. A recent IDC reports shows BlackBerry market share shrinking to just 4.8 percent in 2012, a 40.9 percent drop over its 2011 market share. Chilling figures, but the real information is coming from the front lines.
Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told Wired that his firm has conducted surveys of its clients' IT departments, and the trend is not good for RIM.
"We had a majority of them going to cut it (BlackBerry) down to some degree," Dulaney told Wired.
"This could all change next year when they release BB10," he says. RIM showed off its new operating system Tuesday, which includes a unified inbox that presents e-mail, a calendar and social networking updates all in one place. But Dulaney says the anticipation for BB10 isn't moving the needle as much as RIM had hoped.
"Those [clients] that do call up are saying they're reducing the BlackBerry head count. Some of are getting off fully, but most of them are certainly reducing it."
Dulaney made it clear that while these surveys are unscientific, they do offer a glimpse of what the enterprise market is thinking.
Enterprise IT departments often invest deeply when adopting technologies, buying entire fleets of devices and training scores of workers to provide support. With news reports detailing the depths of RIM's suffering, enterprise customers are nervous about investing in a company -- and a platform -- that might not be around for long.
It doesn't help that one of the key technologies in the BlackBerry platform, BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), is far from cheap.
"The licensing is really expensive," the IT administrator told Wired, especially when pitted against Microsoft's competing product, Active Sync Server. The cost of BES licensing is high enough that our source's investment company is ditching BlackBerry all together in the near future.
"Once the BlackBerry users' phone contracts run out, we're not renewing their contracts," he said. "And, the service contract for our BlackBerry server came up about two months ago and we didn't renew it."
"If our BlackBerry server goes down, we're just going to shut it down completely," he says.
Like Apple before it, RIM is capable of coming back from the brink. The leadership team has been replaced, and chief marketing officer Frank Boulben announced the company's marketing department is working as one unit to expose the public to BB10.
The question is, will the guys in IT keep listening?
