HSBC moving to iPhone, dissolving BlackBerry allegiance?
ZDNet Australia certainly seems to think so. According to the site, Global Bank HSBC is considering ridding themselves of their reliance on the BlackBerry, opting instead to transition their workers to iPhones. If this goes through, it could result in a bulk order of up to 200,000 iPhone units which would most likely rank as the highest mass purchases of the handset to date. The fact that a company like HSBC is even considering the iPhone is testament to robust new Enterprise features in the new 2.0 firmware. The move would be a massive boon to Apple, both in terms of sheer sales as well as public perception, and could conceivably convince other firms to consider a similar move. While we certainly won’t see the BlackBerry disappear any time soon, RIM might want to consider pushing out the Bold before the end of the decade, as product delays like this can’t do much to bolster confidence in the firm’s desire and ability to keep up with the times.
Thanks, Grouch, and everyone that sent this in!
Ok when Galv makes a lot sense, you know somethings wrong.
All these people talking about apple’s stuff being cheaper are overlooking the fact that existing BES users have already spent their major outlay so that’s almost a non-issue.
In any case the crucial point when comparing the two devices for a business of this type is not even just the push email where rim is clearly superior, it is the level of controls and restrictions that a company’s bes admin can impose to maintain the high levels of security required by something like a bank.
HSBC has one of the highest rates of identity theft of any bank in the world. It’s clear that they’re not security minded, so going from BB to iPhone certainly sounds like something they would do. I wonder if they’ll open up some unsecured wireless access points for their little iPhone users so someone can creep up and steal even more info ala TJ Maxx.
@Neil
If they’re already using Blackberry, they’ve already got the infrastructure set up, so the cost to continue using it moving forward would be considerably lower than purchasing a batch of new iPhones and possibly re-training employees (you can argue that the iPhone may be an easy interface to learn/use, but every company has a few employees that ride the short bus and will balk at the change). Furthermore, once their security people have time to do their analysis, they’ll likely elect to stay with the Blackberry.
If you consume HSBC services (especially their credit cards), now is definitely the time to bail.
@ justelise
Actually BES licensing and support fees are ANNUAL expenses, so no, the major outlay would not already have been made. It’s ongoing.
There are also additional expenses to factor in as well. A lot of big companies have to employ specific personnel to manage a BES, so you’ve got the ongoing expenses for them as well.
Additionally, did you know many large companies actually have to purchase and manage multiple Exchange servers. Why? Because RIM’s BES does not have a clean method for communicating with Exchange, it places a much bigger burden on the server, and in large (1000+ user) environments it becomes necessary to run several. RIM’s BES basically sits there and keeps asking an Exchange server:
“Any new email? Any new email? Any new email? Hey, Hey, Hey Any new email now? What about now? And now?…”
I agree that there are pros and cons, but it is certainly not as clear but as BlackBerry fanboy morons like Jeff Rago would have you believe.
@Neil
As an BESAdmin of a fairly large company with a significant amount of bb users, I have to put in my two cents here…
All right, first of all, we are talking about HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world, they are not going to go to “second best” when security is at stake, sorry but no. They are probably doing a CBA because one of their high up execs likes the iphone and wants to know if it will work.
Secondly, you don’t seem to understand how BES works. You say BES doesn’t have a clean way of communicating. It communicates through server strength MAPI, which if you were not aware is actually the Microsoft method (Microsoft API). This API is used to communicate to Exchange for an Outlook Client, or for Exchange System Manager (other exchange servers), and to be completely fair, and enterprise solution (other than IMAP) that Apple may introduce will likely use this as well.
Thirdly, BES does not “poll” the mail server like an over-eager user clicking send and receive every 5 seconds, it waits for UDP notifications from Exchange and then initiates a MAPI session to pull that message from the mailbox.
Hopefully that clarifies things.
This seems just to be a ‘normal exercise’ by any corporate entity with the introduction of an ‘interesting’ technology to the market. It does seem to be an inappropriate statement by a ‘corporate officer’ to make such a generalized, albeit it is an innoxious statement.
I don’t think this is the case….I mean they are giving up user friendly business functionality for a multimedia internet phone…..It wouldn’t make sense….blackberry if the most obvious choice over the iPhone in any business scenario.
If they want to get rid of BES, why don’t they just go with Windows Mobile? It’s clearly more enterprise-controllable than the iPhone ever will be.
Of course HSBC is also the same company that’s bleeding cash and shutting down entire departments… so this must be true.
This sounds like the kind of thing a bank would do when it’s performing well, not in this environment.
Of course you can…forward the email, then delete the header info at the top of the email…add your message, hit send. We all want copy/paste and its coming soon along with voice dial.
I got an iphone and canceled my blackberry account. The iphone is crap for email and enterprise apps, I had to re-open the blackberry account. Furthermore Apple does not have any solution yet. There is no such thing as push email on the iphone.
So everyone working at HSBC would need *iTunes* installed on their desktops?
Right.
I have a feeling that they, like a lot of companies right now, are looking at the device and trying to integrate it into their environment. Why? So that they will have legitimate and tested reasons to say “no” when higher ups start talking about wanting iPhones.
I’m not saying this from experience at all.