Corporate clients, the cornerstone of RIM’s customer base in several key markets, are making plans to jump ship after the delay of the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, Bloomberg reports. Robert Cockerill, the head of infrastructure at the London-based Thames River Capital UK, tells Bloomberg that the latest delay of BlackBerry 10 prompted him to hire MobileIron, a mobile device management company that helps business users keep their data secure on iPhones and Android devices. The report says the move makes sense for Cockerill since he expects “much of his staff” to switch to iOS or Android.
Auguste Goldman, the chief infrastructure officer at GoDaddy, tells Bloomberg that his company has developed a plan that could “switch users to iPhone or Android devices ‘within hours'” in case there’s a significant outage of BlackBerry devices. And Robert Burkhart, the director of new technology innovation at Nationwide Mutual Insurance, tells the news organization that employees at his company started migrating from BlackBerry devices to iOS and Android devices last year because he “could see that RIM started to decline.”
“We are well on our way to having a dual environment, so if RIM did go out, we’d be okay,” he said. “If people are starting contingency plans now, they are behind the eight ball. They should have been looking at this all along.”
