Indian Government sets August 31 deadline for BlackBerry

The tangle between the Indian government and RIM over the latter’s e-mail and messaging service continues. The Indian government has now evidently given the cellphone company until August 31 to comply with its decision to allow law enforcement agencies access to encrypted content sent using its services. If RIM does not agree, its services could be blocked in the country, just as they were in the UAE not too long ago. While we would not like to delve into the entire issue of who is right and who is wrong on this matter, the stark fact is that if this is indeed a matter of security, surely it would have been better discussed in a less public manner.

Speaking objectively, we cannot see RIM wriggling out of this one as India is one of its rapidly growing markets and to the neutral observer, there is nothing really wrong with the Indian government’s demand, given the fact that terrorists involved in the Mumbai terror attacks were alleged to have used BlackBerry devices. Ironically, we do not think that even a ban on BlackBerry services will affect the demand for its handsets, as a significant portion of Indian users (especially individual ones) tend to use the handsets without subscribing to BlackBerry services – the handsets are seen as status symbols, especially in executive circles. Alarm bells will, however, be ringing both at RIM headquarters and in Indian enterprise circles. Watch this space for more updates.