Blackberry What If . . .
I like many others am currently caught up in the mobile explosion/evolution as far as capabilities and availability. I am a Blackberry Storm (v1) user and I got here because of some strange loyalty to the Verizon network. I can safely say I would very likely to move to an iPhone if they were on the Verizon network.
Right now we have iPhone and Android getting the most headlines and the comparison usually used in any new mobile devices review is . . .
“Is it an iPhone Killer?”
What I want to know is, what is the impact to RIM and Blackberry of having Android making a relatively good showing with a new device on the Verizon network?
Will the attraction of an open source platform draw developers from the Blackberry platform to the Android 2.0 environment? Will we see companies try and provide an Enterprise friendly messaging solution that is an alternative to the Blackberry Enterprise Server and uses Android instead?
What if RIM decided that they would dispense with their own Java based framework for their phones and used Android instead? Could they deliver their Enterprise grade solutions on top of Android? Would that allow them to invest their development dollars higher up the stack and accept that the lower level software can be a commodity developed by someone else? Would they continue to build devices or rely on other vendors?
Maybe these questions have been asked already and maybe RIM are the ones taking serious looks at similar ideas.
