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Archives for June 2006

RIM loosens tight lips on future BlackBerries

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Russell Shaw from BBHub makes a very good point about how BlackBerry maker, Research in Motion, is shifting from a company that up until recently, released very little information about future BlackBerry devices and features coming down the pipe, to a company that “that embraces the online world- including blogs- as a way to spread anticipation excitement about forthcoming features.”

To make a long story short, RIM is starting to see the value in allowing people like Russell and other mobile technology bloggers, myself included, to talk about BlackBerry gear yet to be released in order to generate “buzz” and interest.
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BlackBerry Connect is going to Spain

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Research in Motion and Movistar today announced the availability of BlackBerry Connect for the Palm Treo 650 in Spain.

Demand for wireless email solutions is driven by the need for increased productivity amongst movistars enterprise customers, said Luis Ezcurra, general director of market development and marketing for Telefónica Móviles España. Movistar believes that working closely with Palm and RIM to provide the feature-rich Treo 650 with BlackBerry Connect functionality will address this demand, as enterprise customers are very interested in investing in solutions that support their business, operational and IT objectives.

Read the full press release here…

Movistar

Filed Under: RIM

Is a RIM takeover of Palm still a possibility?

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I was just listening to Research in Motion CFO Dennis Kavelman on Squawk Box this morning and when he was asked if there was any truth to the BlackBerry maker acquiring rival mobile PDA maker Palm, he didn’t definitively say no.

To be fair, he said that such a takeover was highly unlikely and really didn’t make sense for Research in Motion, however, when asked directly if the rumors were false and that RIM had no intention of merger talks with Palm, Kavelman would not flat out say no.

This could be a case of a corporate exec never saying never or could be that RIM never gives you a clue to what they are doing until they actually do it.

What do you think?

Dennis Kavelman

RIM Reports First Quarter Fiscal 2007 Results

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Revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 was $613.1 million, up 9.2% from $561.2 million in the previous quarter and up 35.1% from $453.9 million in the same quarter of last year. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 71% for handhelds, 19% for service, 7% for software and 3% for other revenue. During the quarter, RIM shipped 1.2 million devices.

The total number of BlackBerry subscriber accounts in the quarter increased by approximately 680,000, in-line with the forecast provided in RIM’s press release on Q4 results, to approximately 5.5 million total subscriber accounts.

“RIM delivered a solid quarter with strong revenue, earnings and subscriber results,” said Jim Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO at RIM. “BlackBerry’s ongoing competitive dominance is driving strong growth in existing markets and fuelling substantial international expansion.”
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BlackBerry Connect coming to Palm in July here in the US.

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In our excitement over the announcement that a BlackBerry with a camera is coming, we completely overlooked what Research in Motion had to say about BlackBerry Connect here in the United States.

In an eWeek.com interview at the C3 Expo in New York, BlackBerry maker co-CEO Jim Balsillie said that RIM will expand it’s BlackBerry Connect service in the United States. “Twenty non-BlackBerry devices can use the BlackBerry service now,” Balsillie said, adding that 20 more would be able to use it this year.

The hold up on BlackBerry Connect enmasse in the US has been that up until now Blackberry Connect only worked on GSM devices. CDMA still dominates the wireless market in the United States and Balsillie said that focus to this point has been on GSM because “providers want to be able to sell their devices to 200 carriers in 100 countries.”


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A BlackBerry with “Image Capture”, urrr ummm a digital camera, is coming…

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RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie must have seen my “What does RIM have against camera phones” post yesterday and knowing the agony that I go thru every time a new BlackBerry that does not have “image capture” capabilities listed in the feature set, decided to let the cat out of the bag about.

According to an eWeek.com article by Wayne Rash, Balsillie more or less said that a Multimedia CameraBerry with a memory slot, MP3, and GPS is coming.

Balsillie also said that RIM would be introducing new features to BlackBerry devices, including MP3 players, video, memory expansion and image capture, very soon. In addition, he said that GPS would be included in virtually all BlackBerry devices, except for some that would work with a Bluetooth GPS receiver.

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BlackBerry Camera, CameraBerry, Jim Balsillie

Berry411: The best Free BlackBerry Download ever…

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About three weeks ago I wrote a post about 5 must have free BlackBerry downloads and, as the first commenter pointed out, I left off the list arguably the best free BlackBerry download ever, Berry411. How I left Berry411 off the list I will never know, however, it absolutely deserves to be on any list of free BlackBerry downloads. In fact, it deserves it’s own post, thus, you are reading what you are reading.
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What does RIM have against camera phones?

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Can someone give me a really good explanation as to why Research in Motion has yet to come out with a BlackBerry with a built-in digital camera?

When I started this blog almost two years ago, one of the top requests that many BlackBerry users around the world had was to add a digital camera to a BlackBerry that allows you to send pictures as attatchments. Nearly two years later this is still one of the biggest requests and I have no idea why RIM is so reluctant to go down this road.

BlackBerry Stealth

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It looks like plans for a new BlackBerry with removable memory and an MP3 player are on the loose and it is called the BlackBerry Stealth.

BlackBerry Forums super moderator Boy Genius said last night to be on the lookout for a new BlackBerry model announcement on EngadgetMobile.com and low and behold, less than a day later, here it is.

The BlackBerry Stealth looks very similar to the existing candybar style SureType keyboard style 7130 series devices and, as we said before, will have removable memory and a built-in MP3 player. A digital camera is noticeably missing however. The BlackBerry Stealth will run on the EDGE and not the UTMS data network and should be released in the October/November timeframe.

BlackBerry Stealth, BlackBerry MP3 Player, removable memory BlackBerry

SONA Mobile VideoPlayer… First Thoughts

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So, I downloaded the CanWest MediaWorks’ VideoPlayer for BlackBerry powered by SONA Mobile yesterday and have had a chance to play around with with it a bit. I know that it is currently in beta, however, my first thought is that VideoPlayer is quite horrible compared to what you get on Windows Mobile and Palm devices.

My first issue is with the quality of the video playback. It is quite grainy and difficult to see. Now, I am only running VideoPlayer on a BlackBerry 7130e and video quality may be better on the more powerful BlackBerry 8700, however, it is pretty darn bad on the 7130e. The sound quality is OK, however, I didn’t see a way to adjust the volume during playback.
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