I am not sure who coined the term ‘BlackBerry Killer’ but I think that I first heard the term around the time that the Treo 300 was the biggest thing in PDA phones next to the BlackBerry and everyone eagerly anticipated the release of the Treo 600, which was supposed to stop anyone from ever buying a BlackBerry again.  Since that time every cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard on it released in the United States has been called the BlackBerry Killer.

Honestly, I think that the only company that could truly release a BlackBerry Killer is Research in Motion themselves.  If RIM were to change the name of their next generation BlackBerry devices, that could be considered a BlackBerry killer.  It would also be considered the dumbest marketing move ever.  The BlackBerry brand is on fire right now.

If you really think about it, no single PDA phone will be able to replace BlackBerry, the darling of corporate America’s mobile workforce.  It will take a back-end solution like Good Technology or Visto to, not only do what the BlackBerry and BES can do, but to do it so much better and cheaper than Research in Motion, IT shops would be willing to swap out technology on the server side.  They would also have to be willing to replace over 3 million BlackBerry devices that are currently sending and receiving email better than any other device on the market.

Just recently we saw BlackBerry subscriptions increase by one million users in just six months.  We haven’t seen all the BlackBerry Killers combined do that kind of business in a year.  Some models of the BlackBerry have been in circulation for several years.  We have seen BlackBerry Killers get discontinued after just a few months.  I am not saying that it is not possible for some new handheld to come out that has all the features  just shy of a Star Trek Tricoder to possibly take a little bit of Research in Motions share, but a BlackBerry Killer…  I think not.