India Inc may switch to BlackBerry’s competitors

Aug 31, 2010 |
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New Delhi, Mumbai, Aug. 30: Indian companies are mulling options that include leaving Research in Motion (RIM) for other smartphone makers as they face a threatened ban on BlackBerry services that could disrupt business.

RIM’s rivals Apple Inc and Nokia would be among the biggest gainers if India blocks BlackBerry services. Both firms are waiting to gain share in a market that has been mostly dependent on BlackBerry.

BlackBerry, faces an August 31 deadline for giving Indian security agencies access to its corporate email and messenger services, failing which the services would be blocked, the government has said.

General Electric’s Indian unit, which has about $2.6 billion in revenue in the country, has already started discussing options to switch to other services, according to well placed sources.

Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s No. 2 IT software services exporter, would look at using alternate services for communications to ensure that its business was not affected if some BlackBerry services were banned.

“We hope that this issue will be resolved soon,” said an Infosys spokeswoman. “If the need arises, we will use alternate services to help our staff access mails.”

An official with one of RIM’s rival companies confirmed they had started getting queries from wary corporate BlackBerry users asking if they could be a substitute for BlackBerry.

Nine mobile operators offer BlackBerry services in India, of which Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar are estimated to have the maximum number of BlackBerry users in India.

“There is a chance that we could receive further orders from the government requiring us to shut down certain services available on the BlackBerry platform for an undetermined length of time,” Vodafone Essar told its corporate customers in an email.

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