Don't discount BYO as factor in RIM's long-term hold on enterprise

How many of you are using your own personal mobile device - maybe a Blackberry, an iPhone or a Treo - to send and receive work e-mail? I know I am.

Here's why I ask: This morning, UBS analyst Jeffrey Fan upped his rating for Research in Motion, the maker of the Blackberry, on the theory that the company will benefit, in part, by pent-up replacement demands in the enterprise once the economy starts to recover, according to a post on Barron's Tech Trader Daily blog. The blog writes:

Fan’s thesis is that lower carrier BlackBerry inventory is partly a function of weakening enterprise replacement demand. He contends that “given little competition in the enterprise market,” as well as limited IT budgets to cover switching costs, depleted inventory of Blackberries in IT closets, continued and pent-up replacement demand and rehiring in an improving economy, “hardware units can drive material upside” to consensus estimates for the February 2011 fiscal year.

I don't necessarily disagree with that line of thinking, but I can't help but wonder about the "Bring Your Own" factor. Take a look at what's happening with mobile devices. IDC reported this week that worldwide phone shipments were down almost 16 percent in the first quarter but that smartphone shipments were up 4 percent as carriers upped subsidies in that category.

The big push in mobile these days is, of course, smartphones - and increasingly, targeted at the consumer. Consider RIM's own Buy One Blackberry, Get One Free promotion with Verizon Wireless a while back, as well as the consumer launch of the G1 and the anticipation building around the Palm Pre. And, of course, there's the iPhone.

As consumers invest in these devices for personal use - including personal email - it's only natural that some will want to dump the company-issued Blackberry and just reroute the email inbox to the personal iPhone. Who wants to carry around two devices, right? In that scenario, the employer no longer needs to replace an older Blackberry and that "pent-up replacement demand" that the analyst refers to is diluted.

I'm not saying that the Bring Your Own factor is a big game-changer for RIM or any other mobile player this quarter or next. The economy is still having its impact and I'm sure there are still plenty of people who use a company-issued Blackberry, as well as plenty of companies that will have some sort of pent-up replacement demand in the next year or so. But I also think you can't ignore the BYO factor, especially as it continues to grow.

The idea of Bring Your Own isn't new. For years, Gartner has been talking about Bring Your Own PC in the enterprise and, last year, the idea gained some attention when software company Citrix Systems announced an $2,100 stipend for employees to purchase their own personal laptops to also be used for work.

I like the idea of the Bring Your Own PC, too, but there are bigger issues at work there, including security of the information that might reside on the PC. As we head deeper into the cloud - and cloud-based applications for the enterprise (such as Oracle and Salesforce apps for the iPhone)  - the security issue on mobile also starts to fade a bit.

If we're going to look long-term - ahead to the economic recovery, for example - we have to look at everything at play, including new buying and usage habits. We can't just expect to head into a recovery and go back to doing business the old way.

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