As a former employee of 1 of the 4 big cellphone carriers,  I can tell you exactly why this is happening.  Every year representatives from cellphone manufacturers such as motorola, samsung, nokia, and RIM would come and speak with employees to get a feel for the market.  Every year, these companies would make changes to their devices.. except for RIM.  When they came out with the scroll ball, it was immediately brought up that the ball eventually would break and would get large deposits of dirt in it overtime.  This would cause the trackball to eve ntually stop working.  They ignored it until they made the phone for 2  years and had over 100,000 trackball complaints.  They were years behind every other manufacturer in placing cameras on phones because they considered it unncessary, and then they put in the lowest res phone you can have.  Point is, they did not heed warnings from the very companies they sold phones to and this is the results.

The BB is for serious business purposes, phone calls, files, e-mails. If you need information to get to you and be received by others to make a living then a BB is the way to go. Have tried many “smart” phones, plain and simple the I-phone is a religion, good for the masses, but not for everyone. If you want to play all the latest games and spend hours accomplishing nothing more than having fun then by all means get an I-phone, in fact get in line every time a new one comes out. But if you want a device to help you make a living and transact business reliably and consistently then it’s a BB. No product is perfect, the i-phone pretends to be, the BB just works harder and longer. I rue the day RIM is gone and I'm forced to use an inferior alternative.

I Agree with HireGoonz.

Unless your a business user that utilizes the BES server that way it was designed - to securly deliver content to your phone that lives in your enterprise, (it does more than just email folks like allowing access to sharepoint and other internal website and applications in your organization and  the problem is most companies only configure for email)  The iPhone, Android and Windows devices are far behind in that regard.  The users commenting here against the BB are not completely familar with BES and why it exists.

How with that said, if I was to carry a phone for personal use only I would prefer a iPhone or Android device over a BB - but for work I perfer to use my BlackBerry mainly because I and the System Engineer responsible for the BES server and know the strengths over the iPhone and Android devices. 

HiredGoonz -

Having used both iPhones and Blackberrys in a business setting, the iPhone has it all over RIM products.  No goofy software on a PC to help interface email with an iPhone and no proprietary expensive software to be loaded on servers to remote desktop into business systems like RIM is pushing.

Not only are iPhones and iPads fun, but their functionality is heads and shoulders over Balsillie's offerings as well.

To Brian in Milwakee, Lisa Smith is absolutely correct!

While you can VPN into the company network with an encrypted connection, the issue here is email on a mobile phone.  And Blackberry is the best in the business when it comes to this.  Yes you are at the mercy of BIS (Blackberry Internet Service) servers, but how cool is it that if the Government wants to intercept your communications, they need a court order and RIM's help to do it??? Or any other hacker for that matter. Iphone and Android are easily hacked as is proof in the many security updates both these platforms have had to issue since their inception.

Brand new week, we started on the upside but be very cautious; not a whole lot different than last week as far as plenty of manipulators going nuts trying to bring this market down..At 1010 hrs they already called to start the selling...Lets see if we can hang in there. Obviously it is still very early, anything can happen...More later.

Do you encrypt your data when remoting in with a PC? 

Same difference... 

By accessing the servers by either BES (which is just another proprietary level of access) or by going through a companies normal firewall, the access/security issue you are referring to is a moot point.  One needs security to get through the firewall to gain access to the system.  Just like any PC that resides at your bank or any other business that has an ounce of security for that matter.  

The article refers to RIM's fall from grace.  By pulling this IBM like "it's our way or the highway" attitude when it comes to network access,  many companies are finding the expense is not worth it.

Especially when it isn't needed...