WES 2009: Not Everyone Has A BlackBerry. Yet

I am attending RIM's Wireless Enterprise Symposium this week in Orlando. Today, I was quite shocked to see dozens of people lining up to use public desktop computers to...check their email. RIM, the irony is killing me.Public PCs are a common site at trade shows. They give conference attendees a chance to take a break from running around and log onto the Internet for a while. Often, these machines are used for checking Webmail accounts. This year's WES is no different. The PCs are sprinkled throughout the conference center.

At first I didn't give much thought to them as I walked past. Then I stopped and thought for a moment about what the users of these machines were doing. They were checking their email. At a BlackBerry conference, which is centered around mobile email and enterprise connectivity, there are obviously some that don't, er, get the message.

The irony of this situation borders on the ridiculous.

Granted, I understand that most people don't peck out thousand-word emails on their handheld devices (unless they're looking for sore fingers). People have to resort to using a full keyboard at some point for those longer missives.

But still.

The message was clear to me: Perhaps mobile email (and BlackBerry users) aren't as widespread as we think.