Student Case

In October 2007, the launch of the first Arabic Blackberry was announced in the United Arab Emirates. The device had Arabic language input and an Arabic interface. Up until this point, the Blackberry was restricted to U.S. and European use. The new initiative to bring the Blackberry to the Middle East and Africa had begun.

The UAE's mobile phone provider telco Etisalat collaborated with the creators of the BlackBerry, RIM (Research InMotion), to create the Arabic version of the e-mail smart phone. The device allows Arabic customers to compose Arabic e-mails, browse Arabic Web sites, and input Arabic text into the PIM (personal information management) software applications. The device is fully integrated with IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange, and Novell GroupWise servers.

The Blackberry has brought about the buzz word "push e-mail' into the business world. The concept is actually very simple. It works on the principle that rather than pulling e-mails at intervals on a mobile handset, the technology actually allows the e-mails to be pushed. In other words, each and every e-mail is delivered instantaneously and individually to handsets.

In the Middle East, the move towards a mobile workforce is gathering pace. Many businesses in the region want and need the flexibility of having their employees out in the field with the capacity of receiving e-mails and the ability to send them. Nokia's head of enterprise solutions in the Near and Middle East, Joe Devassey, explained: "Do [the businesses] have a mobility strategy? No. A lot is happening accidentally. It's not as if the IT managers in most companies in the Middle East actually have a plan like they do for installing networks or firewalls. It's happening more randomly, but there's definitely a lot of interest there from governments, banks, and the hospitality industry across all the verticals really."

Rather than the handset manufacturers or service providers trying to create a demand for the product, it has been the enterprises themselves that have been driving the conversion to push e-mails. In fact, some employees have been buying their own handsets