I was just reading a market scan on Forbes.com about disappointing BlackBerry 8700 sales. I am taking it with a grain of salt however… Piper Jaffray analyst T. Michael Walkley is blaming flat to down BlackBerry sales at Verizon on the fact that the Treo 700w outsold the BlackBerry 8700. (I would think so seeing how Verizon doesn’t carry a BlackBerry 8700)

Walkley states that “Research in Motion has failed to deliver on hopes for near-term growth due to increasing competition that could drive lower margins on devices and slow down earnings growth in 2007“. That is probably true, but, let me really tell you why the BlackBerry 8700 doesn’t sell as well as you think.

The BlackBerry 8700 really doesn’t do all the much more than older BlackBerry models. Lets see, it has a brighter screen, is a bit smaller, and has better battery life. There is nothing so groundbreakingly different about the 8700 that would cause companies to swap out their existing devices with a new 8700. Sure, new corporate BES users may get the latest and greatest device, but the millions that already have an older model aren’t going to suddenly get upgraded just because a new model that does exactly the same thing and little else than they one they currently have is out.