Putting A Price On Love

Maybe it's cynical, with Valentine's Day right around the corner, to say it, but it's time for some of us to put a price on love. If you're a BlackBerry user you can deny that there's any alternative and cling to the idea that your BlackBerry is priceless. But with a possible shutdown of BlackBerry service looming it's time to take a hard-headed business approach and put a dollar value on what it would cost you — and all the other BlackBerry users in your company to switch. And I've got a bottom-line number for you: $845 apiece. That comes from researcher Jack Gold.Gold, principal and founder of the research firm J.Gold Associates, tallied up the estimated cost per user for a company to switch from BlackBerry to another service, such as Good Technology, on a Palm Treo, and SearchMobileComputing.com reported his $845 figure.

Gold breaks it down to $300 per user for new devices, $280 for lost productivity (about four hours, he allows), and the remainder for buying and deploying the software, and training. Interesting reading. And more expensive than flowers and candy.