Blackberry Addiction Persists as iPad Fans Abound: Davos Diary

Robert Barnett loves his iPad -- and is addicted to his Blackberry. “I need the keyboard,” says the chairman and chief executive officer of Shaklee Corp., a private investment company based in Pleasanton, California.

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Barnett is typical of the attendees bristling with devices at this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. While Apple Inc.’s iPad is ubiquitous among the web-surfing, one-finger-peck-and-typing, news-checking, note-taking crowd, and its iPhone a favorite for text messaging, Research in Motion Ltd.’s mobile handheld is still the e-mail device of choice, even among those packing all three devices. The computer laptop, though, looks like an endangered species.

“The Blackberry is still indispensable,” says Jamal Akl, group vice-president for sales at Greek engineering company Consolidated Contractors Co., who switched between checking e- mail on his Blackberry, surfing the Web on his iPad and taking notes with a Mont Blanc ball-point pen on a paper notepad during a panel on energy.

The WEF, well aware that its affluent and geeky crowd includes a lot of early adopters of new technology, has created a neat application that lets iPad-hugging delegates check for agenda updates, sign up for meetings and scrutinize the biographies of fellow attendees. This lets conference-goers avoid staring at each others’ chests trying to decipher identity badges to decide whether it’s worth engaging with whoever is standing next to you at the coffee machine.

Three Gizmos

“The iPad is the gizmo of the year and Davos has an app, so it’s great,” says Joe Saddi, chairman of global consulting firm Booz & Co. His Crackberry, though, remains close at hand. “I have a Blackberry, iPhone and iPad. They all have different uses.”

The plethora of gizmos most executives choose to bring suggests that no manufacturer, not even Apple, has found a way to create a single, one-stop solution that satisfies every need of the modern road warrior. For now.

“I still have my laptop as a backup and still use my Blackberry, but the idea is that they’ll be completely replaced,” says Robert Court, head of government relations and external affairs at Rio Tinto Plc. “The challenge at the moment is to have it all completely synchronized.”

No Keyboard

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If Apple is willing to risk cannibalizing the market for its handsets by adding telephony to the iPad, it might be on the way to offering gadget nirvana. Still, the lack of a physical keyboard, with some people finding the touchscreen approach a bit tricky, might remain a deterrent to total domination.

“I still prefer the Blackberry as a phone and for quick e- mails,” says Sonali De Rycker, a London-based partner for venture capital fund Accel Partners, who also has an iPhone, iPad and laptop. “The iPad is still not perfect to type long essays, but it’s very close to perfection.”

Paul A. Laudicina, managing officer and chairman of consulting firm A.T. Kearney Inc., has solved the problem by buying a third-party keyboard that plugs into his iPad. He says he’ll leave his laptop at home on his next business trip and just use his Apple device. “I’ve gone from agnostic to avid convert in a very short period of time,” he says.

That kind of behavior hasn’t gone unnoticed. “Davos showed us the potential of the iPad as a serious business tool,” says Yu Lin, chief executive officer of NetQin Mobile Inc., a Chinese company that says it’s the world’s biggest provider of security software for mobile device users and plans to start focusing on iPad support. “It has obvious advantages in mobility: instant startup, long blackberry pda battery life and you don’t have to sit down to use it.”

One person who isn’t tapping at an iPad at Davos? Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Inc., who’s waiting until his company introduces its own tablet computer. “Stay tuned,” he says.

(Mark Gilbert, author of “Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable,” is the London bureau chief and a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)