Blackberry Thunder Or Just Distant Lightning

Blackberry Thunder, the next iPhone killer. Or should I say, the next iPhone killer rumor? Everyone gets all hyped up about, when is someone going to create the iPhone killer? Well, the first requirement to be an iPhone killer is you've got to be at least as good if not better than the iPhone. Doh! Nothing shipped to date by cell phone manufactures has come close. RIM's done a great job of continuously improving the Blackberry for Blackberry users (other than HTML email, btw), and LG and HTC have come out with some look alike wanna be's, but they aren't even close to being iPhones. They are just PDA phones in quasi iPhone packages. Microsoft dropped hints at their Windows Mobile 7 vision for a dramatically different PDA / cell phone experience but the silence since has been deafening.  More remnants of the Bill Gates era of five year vision, four year product drought strategy I guess.

Rumors are now flying about the Blackberry Thunder. Originally rooted out by The Boy Genius Report last year, it was talked about as the Blackberry 9000 and 9xxx. BGR has a more recent posting with their mockup of what the Thunder might look like (nice job of keeping the story alive, boys.) The only problem is, other than suspecting the Thunder has a touch screen, Thunder sounds a awful lot like the Blackberry Bold, now called the Blackberry 9000. The 9000's got a killer screen (not touch), 3G, HSPA for international support, etc. I've really got to wonder if the rumored Thunder that's hoped to be out Q3 this year is really the launch of the Bold. I suspect it is.

Meanwhile, where the heck are the Microsoft Windows Mobile people? I gave up on my Windows Mobile 6 device and switched to the Blackberry a while back. WM6 is just not useable. It's like putting on a pair of mittens and then trying to use your cell phone. Clumsy and awkward doesn't even come close to describing the experience compared to the well designed Blackberry software. Is Microsoft going to fulfill some of the destiny described in Windows Mobile 7 and go after the iPhone or what? Mums been the word and there's no sign of that changing in the near term. Time to call a Code Blue on Windows Mobile OS? We need to see some signs of life, folks.

As far as the Blackberry Thunder goes, I'm not confident we'll see anything in '08 at all. Seems like everyone's pinning their hopes on the next great contender who hasn't even emerged from the ranks yet.

Remember when you were a kid and you learned you could tell how far away the storm was by the number of seconds counted between seeing lightning and then hearing the thunder clap? So far, I see a lot of distant iPhone killer lightening, but don't even hear any thunder yet. I'm not sure it's time to start counting yet.

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