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Apple Poaching Enterprise Sales Staff From Research in Motion

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Apr 12, 2001
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As evidence of Apple's strong push into the enterprise market for the iPhone, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that the company has hired at least five key members of Research in Motion's enterprise sales staff over the last year and a half.
In the past 18 months, at least five members of RIM's enterprise-sales team have left the company to join Apple. This includes Geoff Perfect, who served as Head of Strategic Sales at RIM for nearly five years before leaving in April 2009 and joining Apple a month later as Head of Enterprise iPhone Sales, according to LinkedIn, the online networking service for professionals.
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The report notes that Apple revealed during its most recent earnings conference call that 80% of Fortune 500 companies are piloting or using the iPhone. During that same call, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that Apple had handily beat Research in Motion in smartphone sales for the quarter, and reported that he doesn't see the BlackBerry maker catching back up.
The movement of personnel from RIM to Apple underscores Apple's aggressive push into the corporate-smartphone market, which RIM has traditionally dominated. On its fourth-quarter earnings call in October, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said more than 80% of Fortune 500 companies are deploying or piloting the iPhone.

On that same call, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs triggered a war of words with RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie by taking several swipes at RIM during the call. For instance, Jobs noted the iPhone outsold the BlackBerry in RIM's corresponding quarter and he questioned the viability of 7-inch tablet computers, which include RIM's upcoming PlayBook. Apple's iPad tablet is 9.7 inches.
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Also on that conference call, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook noted that while Apple isn't offering business-specific hardware, the company is making a stronger push into enterprise sales as the iPhone's software has continued to gain features important for corporate customers. To that end, Apple has worked with its carrier partners to support corporate-friendly billing and other solutions for the iPhone and iPad, and has tapped partners such as Unisys to assist with supporting enterprise and government customers.

Article Link: Apple Poaching Enterprise Sales Staff From Research in Motion
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/11/23/apple-poaching-enterprise-sales-staff-from-research-in-motion/
Good for Apple. Although I wouldn't like me competitors taking my employees from me. Esp if they have talent. And If RIM wants a spot, they need to make a modern smart phone like iPhone and Android. That kind of modern.
 
JRomero said:
Just another reason why I can't wait to get rid of my BlackBerry.
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Hope people realize you cannot get push e-mail working on an iPhone unless you use their paid .Me service and Gmail, or if your company has exchange.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148a Safari/6533.18.5)

Five out of how many? 10?, 100?, 1000?
 
ChiatDay said:
Hope people realize you cannot get push e-mail working on an iPhone unless you use their paid .Me service and Gmail, or if your company has exchange.
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I think the three useless emails I get pushed to me everyday are worth sacrificing for an iPhone. I'm just so tired of being on the bottom of the food chain as far as innovation and technology goes. It's rather comical that BlackBerry was one of the leaders and innovators of the smartphone for so long, and now, they're just a step above Symbian.
 
ChiatDay said:
Hope people realize you cannot get push e-mail working on an iPhone unless you use their paid .Me service and Gmail, or if your company has exchange.
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You should try email on a Blackberry not using Exchange and not using Blackberry's service. It really sucks.
 
Lets see, every time I try to use my wife's blackberry to browse the web I almost puke.

The iPhone is so great because it offers you a great web experience far richer than RIM's and most Android phones. Those which work closely well as the iPhone cost about the same, so, what is the point?

Then the iPad is gorgeous for getting rid of a laptop if most of what you do is web and mail and don't use proprietary applications. Even so, you could have your company start developing an iPad front end which would also do the trick. We can't hope to have a portable desktop with hexacore just to run that windows based application your IT folks developed.

Now, in between that you have PlayBook, which is not as portable as the iPhone, not as big to justify carrying it in your case so you could use a bigger screen when you have the opportunity, aka, you're not moving or need a quick thing like the iPhone.

So tell me, where the heck PlayBook fits in?

Aside from that, people have tried stealing other company's employees as long as I can remember. Point is, Apple's shares are going way higher than RIM's, or at least raising faster, which as an employee is good.

Bye bye RIM, hope you don't follow Palm's path with a CEO that said the iPhone would fail because "our users want to be able to switch the battery".
 
Yea to be honest I don't see why all the clamor for iphone dominance. I love Apple, I love my Ipod Touch and tell everyone who asks that they should buy it regardless of there "needs" , and lastly I love my Blackberry and can't wait for feb. so I can upgrade again. I don't want those two things to mix they both have specific roles in my life, and I want to keep it that way. Yes they do overlap sometimes, but not so much I want combine them .
 
ChiatDay said:
Hope people realize you cannot get push e-mail working on an iPhone unless you use their paid .Me service and Gmail, or if your company has exchange.
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Guess you nailed it - exchange is most important for enterprise customers (and thats what the article is about). Works perfect on the iPhone - good for enterprise customers.

I'm using exchange for work, gmail for home email - works sweet on the iPhone - I actually see the email on the phone before I see them on the desktop :)
 
ChiatDay said:
Hope people realize you cannot get push e-mail working on an iPhone unless you use their paid .Me service and Gmail, or if your company has exchange.
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A company shouldn't be using blackberries or any type of smartphone if they aren't running Exchange to begin with.
 
Lunchbox700 said:
Yea to be honest I don't see why all the clamor for iphone dominance. I love Apple, I love my Ipod Touch and tell everyone who asks that they should buy it regardless of there "needs" , and lastly I love my Blackberry and can't wait for feb. so I can upgrade again. I don't want those two things to mix they both have specific roles in my life, and I want to keep it that way. Yes they do overlap sometimes, but not so much I want combine them .
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well said - I'd just swap the iOS device for an Android one... but that's just me :)
 
Gemütlichkeit said:
A company shouldn't be using blackberries or any type of smartphone if they aren't running Exchange to begin with.
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Companies or entreprenuers don't HAVE to use Exchange to use Blackberry email. I'm a freelancer myself and don't need Exchange and only use Blackberry's email or my own domain email that is forwarded to my BB.

You know that those who have their own websites CAN add POP email to the BB just like the iphone?
 
RIM is a dinosaur. Those people know that.

ChiatDay said:
Hope people realize you cannot get push e-mail working on an iPhone unless you use their paid .Me service and Gmail, or if your company has exchange.
Click to expand...

Hope people realize RIM sends all your blackberry data to Canada and archives it there.
 
igorleandro said:
Lets see, every time I try to use my wife's blackberry to browse the web I almost puke.

Aside from that, people have tried stealing other company's employees as long as I can remember. Point is, Apple's shares are going way higher than RIM's, or at least raising faster, which as an employee is good.

Bye bye RIM, hope you don't follow Palm's path with a CEO that said the iPhone would fail because "our users want to be able to switch the battery".
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Apple shares are nothing and have no relation to anything. Just because stocks go up does'nt mean the company's making the right moves. Apple has been accused in the past for manipulating stock to go up and so have other companies so be careful on what you praise about.

And second, RIM is not going away like Palm. They know what they're doing and focusing on the CORPORATE/BUSINESS world that demands more performance and power for their work than the mass "I wanna, wanna" consumer market, like those that consume up Starbucks Coffee.

The PlayBook is for working professionals, not toy playing consumers that like to show off in a "Oh, look how kewl I am for holding this thing".

Buying an Apple product is like buying status at a Starbucks.
 
When the PIM stack on iOS is as good as it is on BlackBerry, and the iPhone lasts for 2-3 days of normal use on a charge, it will replace BlackBerries.

These are things RIM figured out 5 years ago. Reliability and stability are NOT the same thing, and they are very important to large enterprises. Fart apps and trendy plain text editors that sync with Dropbox aren't.
 
triceretops said:
You should try email on a Blackberry not using Exchange and not using Blackberry's service. It really sucks.
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Um. Blackberry email is always run on Blackberry Service. You can't run email without either Enterprise or BB Service. It's one of the two. That's how it works using the Setup Wizard. I can add in Yahoo, Google, POP domain email, and so on with it.

You must NOT be using the Blackberry properly.
 
brofkand said:
When the PIM stack on iOS is as good as it is on BlackBerry, and the iPhone lasts for 2-3 days of normal use on a charge, it will replace BlackBerries.

These are things RIM figured out 5 years ago. Reliability and stability are NOT the same thing, and they are very important to large enterprises. Fart apps and trendy plain text editors that sync with Dropbox aren't.
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i have a 3GS and a BB Curve. only thing the BB does better is the unified inbox. it's still not as good on the iphone
 
Maybe I'm missing something but IMAP has always worked pretty well as an alternative to "push" email services.
 
Consultant said:
RIM is a dinosaur. Those people know that.



Hope people realize RIM sends all your blackberry data to Canada and archives it there.
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Yeah, because Balsillie wants all Canadians to see how stupid Americans are from their BlackBerry usage.

What kind of comment, is that? Everyone knows Canadians are really down to earth and honest. Unless you are referring to the fact that it takes longer to access your data, which I doubt.

Does anyone here even know Jim tried to buy 3 NHL teams?
 
MacRumors said:
Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook noted that while Apple isn't offering business-specific hardware...
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It's good to see that Apple is aware that its current offering isn't business-grade, so there is still hope for improvements in that area.
 
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