It appears the blackberries are in season, both the juicy dark berry and the smartphone. The smartphone wars have been spicing up recently with iPhone launching the 4S, the Samsung Galaxy S2 winning the ‘Phone of the Year’ award and Android holding the market share for operating systems. As others bask in glory BlackBerry’s headlines are less positive (although they are pun-tastic) with data services being compromised for successive days on a global scale with trouble spreading as far as the US and Canada. The timing is not great for BlackBerry’s owners RIM, coming after a testing 12months. This starts to raise the questions what next? To us it seems like BlackBerry is ripe for the picking and I’m sure that the big players in the smartphone wars will be lining up their pieces ready for an attack.

I love a conspiracy theory and some of my thoughts after Steve Jobs passed were focussed on the timing with it being so close after the press conference. I mistakenly suggested to the office that he passed before the launch of the iPhone 4S and the information was withheld to ensure that publicity would not be affected. I was berated for the opinion (although I do stand by it). The unfortunate timing of the issues that are affecting BlackBerry and my love of a conspiracy theory got me thinking of corporate espionage. I do blame the advent of such shows as Spooks and 24 which have left us in little doubt that there are events that transpire daily that are withheld from the public. For example, what would prevent one of the major companies attacking BlackBerry in this way in order to reduce the share price and therefore make it less expensive to acquire the company? Granted, I am not remotely suggesting that either of the companies have done this but if publicly funded services under the guise of public safety conduct searches and covert operations, then surely businesses are also capable of questionable actions. Enron, Microsoft, Nestle and Coca Cola have all been subject to one controversy or another during their trading life so it would appear that dishonest behaviour in business is far from exceptional.

Regardless of the circumstance I think we could be in for a game changing few months in the smartphone industry and with any battle there will always be casualties. Could there be a BlackBerry or Apple crumble on the cards?