Research-in-Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) says 50 carriers are now testing its new BlackBerry 10 smartphone, which is expected to hit the market in the early months of next year. BlackBerry 10 will miss the holiday shopping season, but that’s less critical for RIM than it is for some manufacturers because enterprise customers have traditionally been RIM’s bread-and-butter.
One key enterprise client is apparently reducing its commitment to RIM; the Pentagon is reportedly getting ready to purchase Apple and Android devices for the first time. The U.S. government has long valued RIM’s proprietary network for its security, but now even the President uses an iPad.
RIM remains focused on security as a selling point. The BlackBerry 10 supports an encrypted corporate and personal identity on one device. Called BlackBerry Balance, the solution allows users to switch easily from one persona to the other, meaning that personal apps, emails and social media accounts can be kept off a corporate network.
Although RIM has been steadily losing market share in the U.S. and Europe, the company added subscribers during the summer and posted better-than-expected financial results. Its devices remain popular in emerging markets, particularly in India, where the government limits cellular network subscribers to 5 text messages a day. Messages sent using RIM’s BBM messaging service are apparently not detected and so are not subject to the 5-a-day limit.
