Business | Telecoms

Phone fans: Life after BlackBerry

XPRESS meets a cross-section of BlackBerry users to find out why they love it and how they would cope without it if its services are suspended in the UAE

  • By Jay B. Hilotin, Chief Reporter
  • Published: 00:00 August 12, 2010
  • XPRESS

BB first:
  • Image Credit: Pankaj Sharma, Xpress
  • Staff at Active PR in Dubai Media City busy on their BlackBerrys... for many professionals, nothing quite compares to the BB

It's 7.30 am.

Amal Akbar, a 31-year-old publicist, wakes up to the alarm on her BlackBerry Bold 9700, a normal routine of her regular working day.

Her morning begins with her checking e-mail and browsing for news alerts about her clients (to check anything that needs to be addressed quickly) on the phone even before she takes her tea or a shower. Some matters are too urgent to wait.

"Is the press release ready for distribution?" she pings a colleague on the BBM (BlackBerry Messenger). "Not yet, it's going through fact checks… client should have it ready by 8.30am," Akbar's colleague replies as she sips her first cup of the day.

A quick glance at the BB events calendar tells her there's a photo shoot for a client at 11am, followed by a 3pm interview she has arranged with a reporter.

As she drives to office in her Peugeot 206, she uses the hands-free gear to talk to her client, ensuring that everything needed for the 11am photo shoot is in place.

By noon, she has already "tweeted", sent her daily morning messages to friends (about 8-10) and a couple of BBMs to her colleagues, besides typing out five e-mails to the media or pitching stories to reporters.

Akbar, who has been using the BB for 18 months has become so dependent on it that she can't even imagine life without it.

But that's exactly what is set to happen with the UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) planning to suspend BBM, e-mail and web browsing on the iconic phone, come October 11. These are the most popular applications for businesses which find its ease of bypassing PCs and high-security encryption too good to resist.

And with no resolution in sight to the difference in opinion between the TRA and BB maker Canada's Research in Motion (RIM), Akbar is worried. "It (suspension) will cause a major interruption. It'll be hard [for me] to stay as efficient without it," she said.

As the day wears on more messages arrive on the BB. As her day comes full circle at around 11pm, she goes back to her BlackBerry - to set the alarm for the next day. "Life will go on without my BB, but it's a lot more convenient with it," she said.

Nothing compares to you

While both etisalat and du have announced alternative packages for BlackBerry customers, including swapping the RIM device for an iPhone 4, nothing can replace the BB for many existing users.

With over 50 million units of the iconic phone sold across the world as of last year (500,000 of which are in the UAE), the BB has become a personal appendage for most users.

So how long does it take for one to get hooked to BB?

"Pretty quickly," said Sarah Jabbari, 28, who works for Dubai-based Active PR and is a self-confessed ‘Crackberry'.

"I just can't live without it," said Jabbari, a London-raised Bahraini who has worked in Dubai for the last six months and has used the phone for the last 18 months. "It is my main communication gadget. I don't remember the last time I sent an SMS.

"BBM is more fun and [more importantly] free."

Like Akbar, Jabbari uses the BB to set and check appointments with clients, talk to colleagues, friends and former classmates and family in London.

Jabbari also finds the convenience of checking e-mails from her BlackBerry hard to resist. "It's become part of me, like clothing."

Jabbari's colleague Shamim Kassibawi, 23, from New Zealand, said that eight out of 10 people in her Media City firm, Active PR, use a BlackBerry.

"I love it and I use it even in my sleep… The relationship I have with my BlackBerry is very personal," said Kassibawi, who joined the firm two years ago. "I use it for work and for social networking. I'm always tweeting wherever I go."

She admits her work will be affected if the gadget is taken away from her. "It's really going to affect the way I communicate. My life will not be the same."

Great help

When Joy Mozam, 30, a special needs education teacher, spent a month-long holiday with her ward in Europe last July, her BB helped her to keep in touch with everyone, especially her bosses. "I was reluctant to use it initially," said the Filipina. "My employer gave it to me before we left so I wouldn't have any excuse to ignore calls or SMS from them. I liked the idea of chatting with friends located in different countries while we were in Disneyland Paris - and while uploading some pictures on Facebook."

An unbeatable feature for Mozam is BB's ability to gather all her e-mails from Yahoo, Gmail and Facebook messaging accounts into one BlackBerry inbox. Ironically, it was in the same inbox that she got the message about the BlackBerry service suspension on October 11. "It's sad if they do that. Because now, I'm more productive, in touch and updated with it," she said.

User survey

According to a YouGuv survey of 750 UAE residents, including 184 BB users:

  • Two in five support the decision to suspend BB service, while one quarter (25 per cent) are opposed, with the rest not sure.
  • Half of the residents (47 per cent) feel BB and TRA should come to a compromise
  • Two-thirds (66 per cent) think that the decision to suspend BB is likely to stand
  • One-third (34 per cent) of BB users plan to continue using their phone even without the banned services

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