One of the consequences of the steady progress of handset features from high-end feature phones to low-end commodity is that the mass market becomes attractive to more companies… for example, both RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) are interested in expanding their customer base from the corporate part of town to the consumer segment. “In the past year, RIM has started to press into the consumer market, launching more phones with features popular among consumers like instant messaging and music players. The approach helped RIM double its revenue and profit in its most recent quarter compared with the prior year. RIM retains its grip, meanwhile, on its corporate base, holding nearly 70 percent of the U.S. market for the most popular type of wireless corporate email, according to Yankee Group Research Inc” reports the WSJ. For its part, Microsoft is looking at putting services like web search and mapping onto mobile phones—if it’s got any sense it won’t be restricting them to handsets running its OS.

Not that either company is abandoning its corporate base which, while it isn’t a mass market, is certainly quite profitable. In that vein, Microsoft “Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is expected to announce new software called System Center Mobile Device Manager that could help businesses more easily install and update software and control security features on mobile phones. In addition, Mr. Ballmer will detail a partnership with Enterprise Mobile Inc., a start-up in Watertown, Mass., that will help businesses set up Microsoft software for mobile devices”. However, the WSJ writes that RIM and MS are eying the high-end consumer market because “at issue is whether the surge of innovation in mobile-phone software, services and handsets aimed at consumers will start to drive the agenda in the corporate mobile market”. It’s an interesting question, but it’s important to remember the intensely personal nature of mobile phones, which is inherently in conflict with the desire by corporations to control their workers. If a company gives their workers handsets loaded with “security features” and restrictions it doesn’t really matter how good the handset is, many people will be a second one for personal use...which is pretty good news for the mobile handset industry, really. So I think the market that is really aimed at with the “corporate consumer phones” are people who want business features but buy the handset themselves, and this is already going on: “30 percent of the 10.5 million BlackBerry subscribers world-wide are consumers or small-business users not tied to a large corporation”.