One of the world’s largest oilfield companies, Halliburton, publicly acknowledged its decision to stop giving workers BlackBerrys and start equipping them with iPhones. This is a gigantic blow to Research in Motion because the BlackBerry has for a very long time been widely considered the best phone for enterprise users. Halliburton obviously disagrees and so will many other companies if RIM doesn’t step its game up in time.
Spokesperson for Halliburton, Tara Mullee Agard, said to Reuters in an email, “We are making this transition in order to better support our mobile applications initiatives.” The transition she speaks of is the movement from BlackBerry to iPhone over the next two years for 4,500 employees. She also pointed out Apple is helping the company with the process.
Apple didn’t just steal a large amount of candy from RIM, it’s getting the dirty pleasure of chewing slowly right in front of RIM.
BlackBerry advocates, you are now presented with a challenge: come up with a better excuse than “BlackBerry devices are for business users.” I’m afraid that argument is no longer valid. Oh, and since BlackBerry isn’t so hot with consumers either, what exactly is the target market? Please hurry. The BlackBerry Bold Team is waiting for its next mission.