BlackBerry ripens - Brief Article

Training & Development, Feb, 2002

They're not new, but away from Wall Street and Silicon Valley, BlackBerrys are still associated with jam rather than email. The palm-sized email device, with its built-in QWERTY keyboard, just hasn't reached the same popularity with casual consumers as the cellphone and PDA.

That could be changing. Research In Motion * www.rim.com the Canadian-based creator of BlackBerry, still impresses industry analysts with its resolve to increase sales and strengthen its hold on the corporate market. But new competition from the likes of Motorola and Palm, and the expanding voice and data networks (2.5G), may mean a sweeter berry for all.

RIM has steadily increased its subscribers to nearly 250,000 in more than 12,000 companies, despite a recent downturn in sales of handheld wireless devices. And while the competition aims to take advantage of 2.5G and the always-on email feature of the BlackBerry, RIM is seizing the opportunity that 2.5G provides to do what the competition does best: voice and personal management.

A recent agreement between RIM and VoiceStream * www.voicestream.com who will now become a BlackBerry reseller, lays the groundwork for a new generation of voice-enabled BlackBerry devices. These ripened BlackBerrys will run on VoiceStream's GSM/GPRS network, instead of RIM's current, less-advanced pager network, and offer all of the advantages of wireless voice communication.

In addition, RIM has partnered with AvantGo * www.avantgo.com and Neomar * www.neomar.com to offer a calendar application, which can be updated instantly, wirelessly.

BlackBerry is already shipping GSM-enabled devices in Europe. The calendar application has been available for months. Expect to see more people huddled over their BlackBerrys--typing with their thumbs or talking to the home office--in the United States later this year.