A new research note put out by Jeffries (via CIO.com) shows another side of BlackBerry that has the potential to be reshaped into a thriving business. Jeffries performed a poll and found that 18% of IT execs planned on using BES 10 to manage non BlackBerry devices which took the top of the chart alongside AirWatch in a tie. Also interesting was the results that half of those planning on deploying BES 10 do not plan on deploying BlackBerry 10 devices. Thats a conflicting sign for BlackBerry pointing towards a competitive MDM offering but a lackluster pickup for devices. Jeffries found that less than one in five execs planned to upgrade to BlackBerry 10 devices.
Also of interest is the fact that AirWatch has made their intentions public a few times about wanting to acquire the MDM business from BlackBerry. On the other hand I am not sure how easy that would be to decouple especially since it would conflict with Fairfax wanting to focus on enterprise…