India may ban Blackberry devices if they don’t conform to security demands

In terms of smatphone platform market share, it’s no secret that Android is in the lead and in a recent study, it revealed that Android currently controls just over 40% of the smartphone platform market share. RIM in the past might have been one of the big boys but according to recent study the company isn’t doing so well and is on the decline.

It seems that in India there’s a chance that the device could be outlawed if they do not comply with the government’s security demands. As most Blackberry users probably know, especially those who use it for enterprise purposes, Blackberry is best known for their BBM service along with data encryption which makes for sending work emails, especially those that contain sensitive information, a pretty safe affair.

However the encryption was not met with enthusiasm by India’s government and the government is now demanding that RIM start providing the encrypted data in a more readable and intercept-friendly format. Apparently the reason behind this request is so that India will be able to better fight mobile and internet threats.

This is not the first time that RIM has faced this situation as the company has encountered similar issues in Saudi Arabia, and have compromised by setting up an enterprise server in the country. However the UAE decided that it still did not meet its security concerns and have since banned the service. If India follows the same route as UAE, it looks like RIM will lose yet another market, something which we don’t think the company can really afford to do at the moment.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry, government, india, RIM, Security