BARCELONA—In the halls of Mobile World Congress (MWC), a lot of vendors are offering up solutions to help operators contend with the capacity crunch already under way in some networks and expected to hit more operators as data demands surge.
Research In Motion (RIM) President and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis took the stage Tuesday morning to remind folks that RIM’s BlackBerry service has been conserving capacity and efficiently delivering e-mail for quite a while now. As the industry braces for even more data-hungry apps, BlackBerry delivers superior service for the operators compared with other smartphones, he said.
Lazaridis’ appearance was significant not only because he happens to head one of the world’s most successful smartphone providers. His keynote happened to occur just one day after Microsoft announced its Windows 7 for mobile and impending consumer and enterprise apps that will present yet another more serious contender to the RIM family of products.
Lazaridis explained that BlackBerry was designed to pull down only as many bits as required to perform its tasks, such as e-mail and e-mail attachments. Plus, BlackBerry handsets have the best battery life around because they’re conservative when it comes to turning on the power-hungry radio.
It’s not all about e-mail. Lazaridis also said a carrier can support three BlackBerry browsing sessions for every one browsing session by another smartphone. In a shot at some other (unnamed) popular smartphones on the market, he also noted that BlackBerry always has enabled multi-tasking and cut and paste.
As for that topic that permeates nearly every discussion at MWC – applications – he said that what matters is quality, not quantity. He showed off what RIM calls “super apps” that are so well integrated with the device that they become a natural part of daily activity. For example, BlackBerry users can view and send tweets from the inbox rather than opening up a separate application. eBay on a BlackBerry syncs with the calendar.
RIM is working with Adobe, Oracle, IBM and others to develop more super apps, he said.
During his keynote, Lazaridis also referred to news that RIM will offer BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express for free. It’s server software that synchronizes BlackBerries with Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Windows Small Business Server. The new BlackBerry Server Express software will be provided free to address the small and mid-sized businesses that want the enterprise-grade security but don’t need all the advanced features. Another reason for the move is to offer a cost-effective solution for IT departments to meet the growing demands from employees who want to connect their personal BlackBerry smartphones to their work e-mail.
