I just noticed that Vodafone, Optus, and Telstra have released a new version of BlackBerry Connect for the Palm Treo 650 in Austrailia and it just got me to thinking about why BlackBerry Connect is so scarce in the United States.

I understand that Research in Motion still makes dump truck loads of money off of device sales, however, it seems to me that monthly subscriber fees are the key to long term viability for the company as handsets will eventually become commodities.

RIM should take a page from Microsoft and worry not so much about which devices BlackBerry Connect runs on so long as it runs on 87 to 93% of all devices. I know that the carriers play a big role in this and they too should get the ball rolling on making BlackBerry Connect available on more devices.