Blackberry’s days are numbered

If you believe some of the free-floating estimates, there are somewhere around 500,000 BlackBerrys among 1 million to 1.5 million smartphones in use in Thailand. Software developers doubt there are that many but do agree: Research in Motion’s BlackBerry is the most popular smartphone in Thailand. (RIM’s office is Singapore declined to estimate and doesn’t yet have an branch in Thailand).

Yet interest in developing apps for the BlackBerry is slender.

If a developer is committed to developing an application for all operating systems, it will get to BlackBerry, but that isn’t the first or even second system in the queue. The skepticism about BlackBerry’s future lies partly with the kludginess of the operating system, which developers and analysts worldwide think will soon be outpaced by the superior iPhone, Android and Windows 7.

Then there are the reasons BlackBerry has done so well in Thailand—and Indonesia. Prices for a handset are below THB10,000 on the grey market, at least half the price of an iPhone. The clincher for Thai and Indonesian consumers has been the reasonable (THB500-600) prepaid monthly packages that include unlimited text messages. Unlike SMS messages, these are conveyed via the internet but, otherwise, these users tend not to browse the Web or use the other internet-enabled features that telecom operators would so dearly love to charge for. That’s probably true of most of the other smartphone users in Thailand as well.

Some of Blackberry’s most visible users, like students and female office workers, are a fickle lot. “Some say that Thais change their mobile phone every eight months,” said Freewill FX’s Nuttapon Boonpinon. Loyalty to the BlackBerry phone hasn’t transferred to the sister tablet, Playground.

Business users were attracted to the monthly packages as well as the instant email access. Telecom operators even gave masses of BlackBerrys to individual companies in return for special pricing packages. But companies that issue mobile phones to employees commonly reassess their needs every few years; next time, the choice might not be another BlackBerry.

Shimmy Thomas, MFEC’s vice-president for strategy, remains a lonely champion of BlackBerry. Once so many Thai employees owned BlackBerrys, their companies began requesting specific business apps. MFEC created them to order and the BlackBerry store is well stocked as well. Transferring to a new operating system would require acquiring a whole new set of apps, Thomas believes.

Perhaps another nail in the coffin: BlackBerry no longer is the only smartphone with the killer app that enabled its text chatters to chat with iPhone, Symbian and Android phone users. Now all the other smartphones are able to text each other. Thus the forecast:  BlackBerry’s market share here and abroad will continue to erode as some combination of the iPhone, Android (LG, iMobile, Motorola, Samsung,) and Windows Phone 7 (Nokia) operating systems take over more space within the next five years.

The forecasts could prove wrong because RIM has just announced that all its phones and tablets will switch to a unified new operating system in 2012. It promises much improved graphics and performance.

By Susan Cunningham