Research in Motion (RIM) recently announced the Blackberry “Thunder;” a touchscreen equipped Blackberry. I don’t see this being anything more than a niche device targeted towards professionally Blackberry users that want the touchscreen aspect of the iPhone. It will appeal to the Blackberry user that wants to get the iPhone, but can’t due to limitation from their IT department at work. For example, my firm’s IT department only supports push email for Blackberrys. Even though my current cell phone can understand the protocol and everything to get emails pushed to it, I can’t set it up at work. I can only have push email on a Blackberry. So, if I wanted the touchscreen of an iPhone, on a Blackberry I would get this Thunder.
In all, it makes sense for RIM to release a phone which combines Blackberrys and iPhones; there is a market for such a phone. But I don’t think the market is very large. It appears to be a niche market. Either way, it will definitely be interesting to see how it does against the iPhone.
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