RIM put out a Tweet the other day that insinuated that the new BlackBerry 7 devices were going to be announced yesterday, July 26th. The exact verbage…
You got it! New #BlackBerry devices are coming w/ our new OS, BlackBerry 7! Check back tmrw 4 deets on #BB7FanNight. ^CH
Most people, myself included, took this to mean that RIM was going to release details on new BlackBerry 7 devices that are coming. What RIM actually meant was that they were releasing details on #BB7FanNight… That is a load of BS and RIM knows it…
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President Barack Obama dropped his BlackBerry on the tarmac after deplaning from Air Force One on a trip to Memphis Tennessee to visit families affected by the Mississippi River flood and to deliver the commencement address at Booker T. Washington High School.
[Via Daily Mail]
comScore released its March 2011 report on mobile subscriber market share last Friday, and, when it comes to the the smartphone category, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry continues to lose subscribers at an alarming rate dropping 4.5%, now sitting at 27.1%, in the 3 month avg. ending Mar. 2011 vs. 3 month avg. ending Dec. 2010.
The BlackBerry has slipped to number 2 behind Android who jumped up 6% to 34.7% U.S. share. The BlackBerry is still in front of the iPhone which had just a .5% increase in share now sitting at 25.5%. If the BlackBerry, however, continues the free-fall that it has been on for the better part of the last 18 months, it will slip to number 3 by the time the next comScore report comes out. Rounding out the smartphone category where Microsoft and Palm who both lost 0.9% market share dropping to 7.5% and 2.8% respectively…
[Via comScore]
BlackBerry World, Research in Motions biggest show of the year, is just one week away, running May 3rd through the 5th down in Orlando. One of the stranger rumors about about the devices the will be announced, or, will not be announced, as the case may be, is that only the BlackBerry Bold Touch will be the only BlackBerry smartphone officially unveiled. Knowing that RIM has half a dozen or so new BlackBerry devices coming out in the second half of this year, this rumor doesn’t really make a lot of sense. BGR is pretty reliable when it comes to this type of stuff, but, we hope, this time, his sources got this one wrong…
[Via BGR]
We are a little late on this, however, Research in Motion is running a BlackBerry #PlayBookHaiku Twitter Contest where they are going to give away 20 16GB BlackBerry Playbooks.
To enter the #PlayBookHaiku Twitter Contest you must, first, follow @BlackBerry on Twitter. Then, when an invite goes out over the @BlackBerry Twitter account, you must write a Haiku, a 3 line poem consisting of 17 syllables, 5 on the first line, 7 on the second line, and, 5 on the third line, about the BlackBerry…
To enter, visit http://twitter.com/blackberry and become a follower of @BlackBerry. Twice during the Contest Period, invitations will be posted on the @BlackBerry Twitter page inviting you to enter the Contest (each a “Contest Invitation”). There will be one Contest Invitation posted between April 11th and 15th and one Contest Invitation posted between April 25th and 29th, 2011. To enter, write a fun BlackBerry® related haiku poem and send a tweet to @BlackBerry from your Twitter account, including the hashtag “#PlayBookHaiku” in your message.
You can visit the #PlayBookHaiku Twitter Contest page for a full list of rules, requirements, and restrictions.
It looks like RIM has already sent out the first invitation for #PlayBookHaiku Twitter Contest submissions, however, I still see entries being submitted in real-time. I’d be willing to bet that submissions will be accepted for the first round through April 15th…
Over the weekend I read an interesting article over on the NYT online where Research in Motion founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis gave an interview and seemed to go on a bit of a rant asking the following series of questions…
“Why is it that people don’t appreciate our profits? Why is it that people don’t appreciate our growth? Why is it that people don’t appreciate the fact that we spent the last four years going global? Why is it that people don’t appreciate that we have 500 carriers in 170 countries with products in almost 30 languages?”
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Over the weekend cross platform mobile IM client LiveProfile was released for the BlackBerry. LiveProfile for BlackBerry is an application similar to BlackBerry Messenger in that it shows you when your messages have been delivered, read, and even when contacts are typing a message back to you. The really cool thing, is that it is cross platform meaning that you can chat with contacts that use devices other than BlackBerry, currently Android and iOS.
LiveProfile for BlackBerry is currently in beta, and, has already received one update, since being released just last Friday. Live Profile had to do an emergency upgrade of their servers because of the ridiculous number of downloads that Live Profile is receiving… Over 277,000 in a single day and Live Profile is now the number 4 free download in the social networking category in the Apple App Store. I suspect you will see similar results BlackBerry App World once the LiveProfile for BlackBerry is hosted there.
If you really like BlackBerry Messenger, but, have friends that you can’t BBM with because the have an Android device or an iPhone, I suggest you take a look at Live Profile for BlackBerry. You can download it from http://liveprofile.com/get. If you are on iOS or Android, you can pick up Live Profile for your device via your respective app store…
Download LiveProfile for BlackBerry from http://liveprofile.com/get
Based partly on “customer hesitation” with Nokia as it shifts away from Symbian towards Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS on smartphones and also a much larger smartphone market than most had expected, National Bank Financial analyst, Kris Thompson, has bumped up his BlackBerry shipment forecasts in 2012 and 2013 up to 66.8 million BlackBerrys in 2012 and 77.3 million units in 2013, up from 59.9 million and 67.9 million respectively.
“We previously suggested that RIM could win an additional one million units per quarter in the near term from Nokia’s transition so our 2012 estimate could be conservative. While we do expect RIM to lose market share in international markets, the company may hold share better than many expect.”
Thompson also raised his price target for RIM (RIMM) from $75 to $80 and stated that if RIM does allow Android Apps to run on it’s platform that NBF’s tablet forecast for RIM will need to be increased.
[Via Financial Post]
I was just having a conversation with a colleague about all the news that has coming out of Mobile World Congress, currently underway in Barcelona, Spain. When the topic came around to the BlackBerry, my friend said that all the news seems to be about the BlackBerry PlayBook… Then, tongue firmly implanted in check, my friend said,
“Research in Motion does still make phones… Don’t they?”
Now, clearly, this was a jab right at RIM, but, it really got me to thinking about the last time you really heard RIM officially, or, even unofficially talking about BlackBerry phones coming down the pipe. There have been leaked roadmaps hear and there, but, it seems like RIM has been unusually tight-lipped when it comes to future BlackBerry devices.
There are still a couple of days of Mobile World Congress 2011 left, and, and RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie still has to do his keynote, so, let’s hope that he, in addition to announcing an official release date for the BlackBerry PlayBook, gives us a preview as to what is coming in the way of new BlackBerry phones.
