* Company moves to protect fiercely loyal customer base
After weeks of speculation about the company’s forthcoming BlackBerry OS 6, Research In Motion is poised to launch the latest version of its mobile operating system in the new BlackBerry Torch 9800, which contains the touch screen technology made popular by the Apple iPhone. The device will be available initially for use on the AT&T mobile network starting next week.
After weeks of speculation about the company’s forthcoming BlackBerry OS 6, Research In Motion is poised to launch the latest version of its mobile operating system in the new BlackBerry Torch 9800, which contains the touchscreen technology made popular by the Apple iPhone. The device will be available initially for use on the AT&T mobile network starting next week.
RIM seems to be hedging its bets, retaining the strong features that have made BlackBerry the widespread, popular device it has become in enterprises — sophisticated messaging capabilities and full QWERTY keyboard. Yet it needed an offering in the hip touchscreen, multimedia space to counter the popular iPhone and new Android-based devices.
BlackBerry Torch could sink or swin on OS 6
Most early reports and reviews of the Torch indicate that the device might help RIM retain loyal BlackBerry users, but likely won’t woo users away from other smartphone platforms.
A case in point is Anthony Marano, a produce wholesaler in Chicago with some diehard BlackBerry users and a growing population of iPhone users. Each user population has taken a different approach to fixed mobile convergence (FMC) roaming between Wi-Fi and cellular networks.
“We still have some BlackBerry people, and they’ll probably convert to [the Torch],” says Chris Nowak, the company’s CTO. But those users are on the T-Mobile network, making use of T-Mobile’s Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) services for toggling between cellular and Wi-Fi mobile networks, he says.
“And the Torch is only available from AT&T,” which doesn’t offer such a service, Nowak explains. Anthony Marano also uses AT&T mobile network services, “but most of those users have iPhones. Hopefully, [the Torch] will come out on all mobile networks,” Nowak says.
Anthony Marano uses CPE-based Wi-Fi-to-cellular inter-network roaming capabilities from Agito Networks for the iPhone and a few remaining Nokia devices.
Nowak says that Agito is planning a late-September or early-October launch of multitasking support for the iPhone in its FMC client, which needs to catch up to the iPhone’s relatively new ability to support multitasking. “If and when that comes out, we’ll probably do a lot more with iPhones,” Nowak says.
Among current subscribers thinking of switching devices, the iPhone remains the most desired phone, according to stats released this week from The Nielsen Company. The company says the iPhone has found loyalty with nearly 90% of its current user base and is enticing significant numbers of Android (21%) and BlackBerry (29%) users to consider a move to Apple.
