There was a time, not that long ago, when the ONLY phone you could have in the corporate world was a BlackBerry. In the world of corporate banking, using an iPhone for work pretty much meant that you were an anarchist (although many of them had one for personal use). The perception was that BlackBerry was secure, where other phones were not. However, that perception has been slowly changing. In spite of some malware warnings (usually from security software providers) there are many tens of millions of Android and iPhones out there with little evidence of security issues.

According to a new study, BlackBerry’s recent outage will considerably damage the company, with many of their users switching to other smartphones. YouGov’s smartphone survey (SMIX) found that in September most BlackBerry users rated the company between 8 & 10 (out of 10) for satisfaction. However, following last week’s problems, the overall satisfaction dropped by a massive 8 points. This was particularly marked by the number of users who would consider buying a BlackBerry again. Just 42% of users said they would get another BlackBerry, a drop of 11% on the previous study. Another recent study by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) found that only 16 percent were “completely satisfied” with their BlackBerries, compared to 44 percent of iPhone users.

Of course, conducting a study immediately after such a major outage will reveal customers at their least dissatisfied. RIM still retain a high level of customer loyalty and currently there is nothing that directly challenges BBM for both cost, ease of use and security. Now, if Apple were to develop a secure messaging function then maybe BlackBerry’s future then maybe the corporate world will switch to the iPhone.

More on the study here