Phl is 'no brainer' for BB

A day before I left Bali, Indonesia over the weekend, we had the opportunity to have a sit-down interview with Gregory Wade, managing director for Southeast Asia of Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind the BlackBerry solutions and smartphones. Wade is the acknowledged “evangelist” for BlackBerry solutions and applications that the Canada-based RIM provides to its subscribers and users.

I was in Bali last week for the two-day first BlackBerry Developer Conference (DevCon) in Asia. For brevity sake, let me just refer to BlackBerry as “BB” as every user of this mobile phone device fondly calls it. Wade led top RIM executives in showcasing the newest BB products and services like the BB Playbook tablet which was launched for the first time in Asia, specifically in Indonesia because it is the biggest BB market in the region.

Wade fortunately is a good speaker who gave his audience, especially non-experts like me, an easy walk-through on how BB solutions and applications (or apps for short) could better improve and meet the requirements of end-users as well as the other features of their newest products and services.

The 42-year-old Wade related to us that learning to use the BB is like how his two sons aged 14 and 12 had to learn to ski in the mountains of Canada within a week while they were on vacation.

By the time our sit-down interview with Wade was over, I gained enough confidence that I could keep up with the technology jargons. As I’ve confessed earlier, I am no tech-savvy person. It was good enough I have had experience in using the BB Storm 2 for my basic knowledge of one of their smartphones.

Since BB has widened its platform, Wade noted, the “BB community” now reaches 55 million subscribers in more than 70 countries. In a market study of BB “communities,” Wade cited, they have as many as 35 million app users around the world through BB products and services.

According to a market survey the RIM commissioned, he disclosed, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are the “most used apps.” Thus, he said, the BB “communities” now constitute the “world’s largest mobile social network.”

In fact, BB users now include in their calling cards even the personal identification numbers (PIN) of their BB devices. When we exchanged our cards, Wade has his BB PIN among his contact numbers.

The PIN enables those with BB to exchange messages to each other at no added cost, than communicating through the short messaging system (SMS). This has given rise to a new term – “BBM,” short for BB message.

SMS, or texting, though is still the most preferred service among Filipino mobile consumers who mostly use Nokia and other feature phones. But in the market study of the SEA region, there is a projected “dramatic shift” to BB smartphones, including a growth in the demand for them in the Philippines.

“The demand of Filipino consumers is do more than texting: Offer us some more applications,” Wade pointed out.

Consumers want “quality” apps, not the quantity of apps, he stressed, obviously to parry observations that BB has only about 18,000 registered apps compared to its rivals like Apple’s iPhone that has as much as 300,000 apps or Nokia with 25,000 registered apps.

Wade also shrugged off the reported slower broadband speed in the Philippines. He said BB is built to optimize and take advantage of slower broadband speed that constrains browsing of the Internet. In terms of average Internet download speed alone, the Philippines reportedly lags behind, ranking 139 out of 185 countries.

I read an article posted on the GMA-7 website last week that quoted a World Bank study as saying that the Philippines is reportedly surpassed by small African countries. A case in point is Rwanda that has an average broadband speed of 10.1 Mbps (megabits per second). This is more than six times that of the Philippines’ 1.5 Mbps.

“Why does this matter? Access to affordable high-speed Internet is a key to economic growth and job creation in developing countries, according to the World Bank. The Bank found that for every 10 percentage-point increase in high-speed Internet connections, there is an increase in economic growth of 1.3 percentage points.”

This is perhaps the argument now being raised in the ongoing public hearing at the National Telecommunications Commission on the proposed broadband cap in a bid to improve network efficiency of our telcos and to check against network abuses by tech-savvy consumers.

Wade refused to be dragged into the local policy issue. He, however, cited the recent case of AT&T in the United States when the heavy load on its network slowed down its system. The American telecom giant spent $2 billion last year to ease its network capacity but had to recoup it through higher charges to its end-users. But that’s another story altogether.

In the same independent research done for RIM, he said, it is projected that smartphone shipments to the Asia-Pacific would grow 40.3 percent from 2009 to 2015.

In particular, Wade revealed that RIM looks at 2011 as the “breakout year” for the Philippines when there would be expanded distribution and delivery of BB smartphones and services to retail outlets. “This year, the Philippine market reaches inflection point, a positive inflection point,” Wade said.

As the RIM managing director for SEA, Wade is based in Singapore but frequently visits Manila on business trips for his company. He was here before the Christmas holidays and noticed how the heavy turnout of Filipino shoppers in large malls all over Metro Manila could be potential BB users if the smartphones are sold on more retail basis. The RIM has no local office unlike the Finland-based Nokia that put up Nokia Philippines.

“In terms of the market size, there is appetite and passion for BB,” Wade quipped. When I asked him what would RIM look for as “come-on” incentives to invest more in the Philippines, Wade replied: “Just taking a look at the economic expansion in your country, that’s the incentive for us. To me, the Philippines is no brainer.” And that was a compliment from the BB brains in this part of the world.