Business Phones: What is Yours?

Business phones are an entrepreneur’s most used gadget. To get a sense of what four business owners felt about business phones, Blackberry, and its data security issues with Indian government, I spoke to them. They gave me different perspectives.Paul Basil, CEO of Villgro, is using Blackberry for a year. His view is national interests cannot be compromised if data security is an issue. But he is not aware of the intricacies. Utilizing Blackberry was fun, according to him. He really does not know advantages of other smart business phones. But he would shift another smart business phone if Blackberry is banned.

Kiruba Shankar, CEO of Business Blogging, who reviews gadgets for Financial Express and does lot of other things like TEDx Chennai, unconferences (there are too many to list), uses Blackberry for over a year. He says: “I cannot live without Blackberry.” The push mail feature is a sure advantage and has helped his business immensely. With lakhs of users in India, he does not see the Blackberry getting banned. His take is Blackberry, apart from its push mail, does not offer great features that other smart business phones does not offer.Two geeky entrepreneurs, Suresh Sambandam of OrangeScape and Dorai Thodla of iMorph, use Android Nexus One. Both of them agree that Android provides a lot of apps because it uses open source. Dorai Thodla was using Nokia E62 for seven years and feels its battery life is a great plus. Suresh prefers Android over Blackberry because the sheer number of apps. Dorai, who surfs during his travel, finds that Android has a host of options like a Facebook app, lot of Twitter clients, but battery life is a problem. Both of them have never used a Blackberry.

So, now comes the inevitable question, with the business phone Blackberry yet to weather the storm with the Indian government, what business phone do you use, how long, and why?