As previously mentioned, the recent Saudi insistence on gaining access to the Blackberry Messenger servers have indeed opened up a can of worms for RIM. Long the secure benchmark in the mobile communication world, Blackberrys are being targeted by many officials in the North African and Middle East areas, and as such is under threat to be shut down if RIM does not comply.
India is the latest country to want access to the encrypted BB communication systems – but they perhaps have a good reason to do so. Remember those attacks on Mumbai in 2008? Those terrorists used Blackberry’s as their primary communication method. Why? Because its encrypted… and cannot be seen by governments.
On Thursday the Indian government will make a deadline avaiable to RIM to comply with, otherwise they also threaten to shut down service to BB phones. For a long time Blackberry’s biggest selling point was the secure communication it granted to executives, but now that advantage is quickly coming to a close. In fact in the past month the German government has banned the use of BB with its politicians and civil servants, and the European Union Commission moved to Apple iPhone and HTC smartphones.
Reuters makes a good point in the fact that China and India are the world’s largest mobile phone markets, and if BB is shutdown in these countries, it can pose a significant threat to RIM.
You might have heard that RIM eventually opened up their communications to the UAE – so it is possible that a similiar situation will occur in India, a country with over 600 million cellular subscibers.
