Facing stalling sales and still recovering from the public relations nightmare which was the global BlackBerry services blackout, beleaguered smartphone manufacturer, Research In Motion (RIM) has announced a new business service which, in a first, will also support rival hardware.
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BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, a new software platform, is currently in closed beta testing and will — along with BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets — allow for the management of Android and iOS phones and tablets.
The company promises Mobile Fusion will make life easier for its business and government customers. BlackBerry is famous for its business-centric BlackBerry Enterprise Service. Mobile Fusion is expected to succeed BES.
“We are pleased to introduce BlackBerry Mobile Fusion — RIM’s next generation enterprise mobility solution — to make it easier for our business and government customers to manage the diversity of devices in their operations today,” RIM vice-president Alan Panezic said in a statement.
The company claims that the new service will handle security, policy definition and enforcement, app management and various other business tasks pertaining to mobile devices.
“It provides the necessary management capabilities to allow IT departments to confidently oversee the use of both company-owned and employee-owned mobile devices within their organizations,” he said.
According to PCWorld, despite Mobile Fusion’s central role in RIM’s strategy, the new service is also intended to compete with other mobile-device management systems.
The company, once an industry leader and innovator, has fallen under hard times recently, struggling to compete with Apple and Android-run smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy SII. A number of new initiatives, such as the new BlackBerry OS, BBX, have been announced as RIM attempts to recapture the position it once held.
