After almost a year after the release of the first CameraBerry, the BlackBerry Pearl, it is still unavailable to most BlackBerry users in the United States unless they are willing to switch carriers. I wonder just how much RIM has to do with that?

The BlackBerry Pearl is arguably one of the best selling BlackBerry devices to date, however, almost a year after it first debuted on T-Mobile, it, or any other CameraBerry for that matter, still has yet to be released on a CDMA carrier in the United States. Most device manufacturers, Research in Motion included, are very quick to say that all the power and decision making around device release dates lies with the the wireless carriers. The Apple iPhone release, however, tells me that this is not necessarily the case.

Could RIM exert a little bit more control than they do? I am guessing that they can.

It’s not all RIM’s fault, however…

Don’t get me wrong, the wireless carriers do have an awful lot of control, but, come on… You cannot convince me that RIM has nothing to say about it. No one understands what is going on over there at Verizon but they are probably big enough to do all sorts of crazy stuff that makes no sense whatsoever.

Sprint, on the other hand, is struggling. I cannot imagine that they are in a position to say, “You know what RIM, even though we are loosing share to just about everyone and don’t have any really compelling BlackBerry devices to offer our Nextel subscribers whose last device was the BlackBerry 7100i, we are going to pass on one of your best selling BlackBerry devices ever and continue to get our lunch handed to use by AT&T and T-Mobile“.

Actually, that does sound kind of like something that Sprint would say, but, I digress. The point that I am trying to make is that CDMA BlackBerry users may see newer devices sooner if RIM would just turn the heat up a little.