Rumor has it that the BlackBerry Bold will finally make it’s debut in the United States launching on AT&T September 12th with a price tag of $299. This is based on a tips from store employees.
Most rumors had it coming out in the first half of the month so this sounds about right. I guessed that the AT&T BlackBerry Bold would costs 300 bucks although I had hoped that they would stick a $199 price tag on it to remove the objection that the iPhone is cheaper.
I still think that it will sell like mad to business users and existing BlackBerry users and even do pretty well with new consumers. You just can’t beat texting with a physical keyboard.
Let’s hope that RIM beats Apple to the punch with a BlackBerry Slider.
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So, the BlackBerry Bold is now available in Chile, Hong Kong, Australia, India, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Ecuador, and Canada. What I can’t figure out for the life of me, however, is why the BlackBerry Bold is not yet available in the United States, the country where, less Canada and maybe even with, it well sell more devices than all the other countries combined.
If the rumors are correct, the AT&T BlackBerry Bold will be available within the next several weeks but one has to wonder how much market share RIM has lost to the iPhone and other devices simply because the BlackBerry Bold is not available in the place where the most people will buy it.
Research in Motion is based in Canada so one really can’t argue with any device debuting in it’s homeland, but, it seems to me like the United States should be a priority for any new BlackBerry launch because that is where most devices will be sold.
Earlier this morning we heard that the Rogers BlackBerry Bold was going to be delayed again. Well, it turns out that this is only partly true. You are able to go and purchase the BlackBerry Bold on Rogers site, however, you might be SOL if you were hoping to run into a Rogers store and pick one up.
It would appear that the Rogers BlackBerry Bold release that was supposed to take place today, August 21st, is delayed… again. According to a BlackBerry News tipster, the Bold will be delayed until at least a week from today, August 28th.
This is really starting to get old.
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Australian telecommunication giant Telstra is the first carrier to offer the BlackBerry Bold in in the land “Down Under”. The Telstra BlackBerry Bold has a suggested retail price of $999 but will be subsidized significantly (some rumors say $0 up front) with a 2-year plan which starts at $89.95 per month.
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CrackBerry.com got there hands on sales information for the Rogers BlackBerry Bold and to make a long story short, the darn thing costs way too much.
The Rogers BlackBerry Bold will set you back $399 with a 3-year contract. Existing BlackBerry may be willing to pay this amount, however, new potential BlackBerry users that were debating between the BlackBerry Bold and the iPhone have a about 200 reasons why the should go with shouldn’t go with the BlackBerry Bold.
Chilean mobile telecom Movistar, has become the first carrier in the world to put the BlackBerry Bold into subscribers hands.
Even if you really, really want to buy a BlackBerry Bold I don’t know if you should run down to Chile to try to get yourself one. The BlackBerry Bold from Movistar will set you back 299,900 Chilean pesos, err, umm $588 U.S. dollars and that is with a 2 year contract.
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I’ve been saying for a long time that Research in Motion puts too many eggs in one basket by (generally) allowing CDMA BlackBerry development to lag so far behind GSM development. You can tell me that GSM is the global standard until you are blue in the face but the reality is that the United States is RIM’s most important market and, depending on what numbers you look at, more CDMA BlackBerrys are sold in the U.S. than GSM.
RIM has been able to get by with their old release strategy largely in part because Verizon subscribers generally don’t switch carriers. RIM knows that even if a CDMA BlackBerry is released on Verizon a year after it it first released on a GSM carriers that there will be Verizon subscribers eagerly awaiting its launch.
Although I don’t agree with this strategy I can see some of the benefits of it from RIM’s perspective… The main benefit being that it allows RIM to capture lightening in a bottle twice. If a new GSM BlackBerry is a big hit you can pretty much be sure that the CDMA version will hit big as well. The problem, however, with this strategy is that your biggest GSM carrier becomes the flag ship carrier for the the hottest mobile device, well…ever and that device is not named BlackBerry.
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