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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BlackBerry Shipments Grew 400% Faster Than The iPhone In Q3 is a post from: RIMarkable

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.

Sprint Announces The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is a post from: RIMarkable

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.

Update: Exchange Sync On Droid Won’t Cost Extra For Consumers is a post from: RIMarkable

An interesting report from ComScore on Touchscreen Mobile Phone Adoption came out yesterday and a few things in the report kind of surprised me.

1. Touchscreen mobile phone adoption grew at a blistering rate up 159%.  Nothing really shocking about that.
2. The iPhone dominates  the market with 32.9% market share.  Yeah, yeah… Sounds about right.
3. The BlackBerry sits in 4th place with 7% of the market, only 1.7% behind the number 2 LG Dare and 0.8% behind the 3rd place LG Voyager. Completely wasn’t expecting that.

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.

There Are Probably More BlackBerry Storm Users Than You Think is a post from: RIMarkable

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…

BlackBerry Bold 9700 Now Available From Bell is a post from: RIMarkable

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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Almost Thought For Minute That Verizon Wasn’t Going To Lock The Droid Down is a post from: RIMarkable

If you are a BlackBerry Storm user you may have already noticed a new installer icon on your device.  Verizon partnered with Microsoft and is pushing Bing out to the BlackBerry Storm.  Bing comes pre-installed on the BlackBerry Storm2, but, not wanting original Storm users feeling left out, Verizon is making sure that everyone with a touchscreen BlackBerry bearing the Verizon logo is included.

For those of you that don’t want Bing on your BlackBerry Storm simply hide the installer icon.  Unfortunately you cannot delete the icon which kind of sucks, however, the space it takes up is negligible.  RIM, you should really give users the ability to delete unwanted carrier pushed installer icons.  Not doing so really ticks people off and, right now, you need all the good will towards your brand as you can get.

[Source]

Verizon Pushes Bing To BlackBerry Storm is a post from: RIMarkable

Looks like Rogers is the first carrier to offer the new BlackBerry Bold 9700.  The device is now available via the Rogers website and you can pick it up for $299.99 on a three-year service plan.

[Source]

BlackBerry Bold 9700 Now Available From Rogers is a post from: RIMarkable

If you go back to the the latter part of September, Research in Motion’s stock price (ticker RIMM) was over $88 per share.  At the time of this posting the price is down below $56.  A Large chunk of this decline was because of poorer than expected Q2 fiscal 2010 earnings where the stock price got hammered over a day and a half long period.  Things, however, seemed to settle down with not much movement, up or down, through most of October.

This was the case, at least, until Google announced Android 2 and Verizon started hyping the upcoming Verizon Droid while almost completely ignoring the BlackBerry Storm2.  RIM’s stock price has dropped about another 10 bucks since the Android 2 announcements.

Should RIM be worried about Android? I am guessing that they should at least be concerned…  I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

Should RIM Be Worried About Android? Investors Certainly Appear To Be is a post from: RIMarkable

We just heard that there is a sleak, new premium BlackBerry theme from Elecite named Shell that gives you 4 color options, red, white, blue, and black, accessible directly from within the theme.  Shell has 4 dedicated buttons across the bottom and up to nine hidden icons accessible via hidden hotspots found throughout the them.  Shell costs $6.99 and is available for BlackBerry 9630, 95xx, 9000, 8900, 8530 and 8350 series devices.

You can check Shell out here on Elecite.com’s website.

NOTE! Shell may have a few issues on the BlackBerry Storm2 and BlackBerry Storm running OS 5

New Premium BlackBerry Theme From Elecite: Shell is a post from: RIMarkable