According to an IDG report, year over year shipment growth for the BlackBerry grew by 35.7%. In Q3 ‘08, 14.6% of smartphones sold worldwide were BlackBerrys. In Q3 ‘09, 19% of smartphones sold were BlackBerrys.
In contrast, iPhone shipments grew by only 7.1%. Now, don’t get me wrong… 7.1% growth in this economy is pretty darn good. It’s 400%, or, 5 times less than what the BlackBerry did, but, still pretty good none the less.
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It comes as no big surprise that Sprint has officially announced the BlackBerry Curve 8530. Unlike Verizon, however, they haven’t given a release date. I would think that it would come out before BlackBerry Friday, but, you never know when it comes to Sprint.
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For those of you that follow Research in Motions stock price, you know that it has been rough for the the Waterloo, Ontario based company over the passed 5 or 6 weeks. Back on September 23rd, RIM’s stock (RIMM) was up over $88 per share. Yesterday it closed at $57.61.
That being said, RIM’s board has approved a stock repurchase of common shares valuing up to $1.2 billion. That comes to about 21 million shares based on current market prices. RIM can commence with the repurchase starting next Monday, Nov. 9th.
I am not an investment professional, nor do I offer financial advice. I guarantee, however, this will be discussed heavily on CNBC today, so, you may want to tune in.
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Research in Motion and Verizon Wireless officially announced the BlackBerry Curve 8530. The device will be available November 20th and will cost $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a 2-year activation. My guess is that the new BlackBerry Curve will pick up right where the old BlackBerry Curve left off and become a big seller for Verizon.
The big new feature in the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is most definitely the Wi-Fi and this device will be the first full QWERTY BlackBerry with Wi-Fi on Verizon’s network. For some strange reason RIM decided not to include a LED flash to go along with the digital camera, although it is only 2.0 mega pixels and probably really doesn’t matter that much.
The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is definitely geared towards consumers and will probably do very well with them because of the price and the success of it’s predecessor, the BlackBerry Curve 83xx, which happens to be the best selling BlackBerry device ever.
Check out a detailed list of BlackBerry Curve 8530 features after the jump:
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Yesterday we put up a post, based off of a report from Infoworld, that the much anticipated Verizon Droid would require a $15 fee on top of the $30 per month data plan fee for those who want to connect their device to a corporate Exchange system. Well, according, to a post over on Gearlog, this is not the case.
There’s a lot of confusion going on around the Internet about the Motorola Droid’s service plans. Some people are saying that if you want to connect to a Microsoft Exchange account, data will cost $45 a month instead of $30.This is wrong.
First of all, the Droid uses the exact same data plans as every Windows Mobile Phone on Verizon. There is no special Droid data plan.
Second, whether you pay $30 or $45 doesn’t depend on what you’re doing with the phone. You can hit Exchange email on the $30 plan just fine. It depends on what kind of Verizon Wireless account you have.
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An interesting report from ComScore on Touchscreen Mobile Phone Adoption came out yesterday and a few things in the report kind of surprised me.
Of the 10 devices listed, the BlackBerry Storm received the most bad press, deservedly so, by a long shot. For the Storm to come in 4th when it was such a bad device at launch and having been on the market for a lot less time than the three devices in front of it was more than just surprising. It was actually a bit shocking.
This is probably due to the strength of the BlackBerry brand because no one else could have had a device suck that much, yet sell so well. Hopefully the BlackBerry Storm2 will do better by the brand than did it’s predecessor. Every report that I’ve heard about the BlackBerry Storm2 goes something like, “You know, it’s really not that bad“. If that sentiment remains I think RIM will view the BlackBerry Storm2 as a success.
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Coming on the heels of the release of the Rogers BlackBerry Bold 9700, Rogers has cut the prices of the orginal BlackBerry Bold, the BlackBerry Curve 8900, and the BlackBerry Curve 8520. The prices for each are $99.99, $79.99, and $49.99 respectively. A three-year contract is required.
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Just a day after Rogers released their branded BlackBerry Bold 9700, Bell has released their branded version. Bell’s BlackBerry Bold 9700 costs $70.04 less than Rogers at $229.95 on a three year contract, however, there are differences in the 3-year service plans.
Get more details here…
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I’ll be the first one to say how much I love Verizon’s network and pretty much recommend it to anyone who travels and / or needs to know that they are going to get a strong signal pretty much everywhere and never drop calls.
I will also say that all the crap that Verizon installs on their devices in an effort to control or lock down what said devices can do natively unless, of course, you are willing pay an additional fee, is a horrible way for them to treat their customers and if T-Mobile or AT&T work well enough for you, go with them.
Case in point, the Verizon Droid, which happens to be coming out this weekend, can connect to Microsoft Exchange without any help from Verizon, however, because Verizon says that the Droid is “primarily a consumer phone” they are going to charge you an extra 15 bucks per month to do so even though they aren’t providing you additional service. To be completely honest Verizon probably spends less money supporting customers who pay the $15 Active Sync charge simply because they don’t have to actively block you from accessing Exchange Servers which the Droid can do out of the Box.
If only AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint didn’t suck when it comes to network coverage in comparison to Verizon.
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