RIM Looking Toward "Strongest Growth" with BlackBerry Bold Launch

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RIM Looking Toward "Strongest Growth" with BlackBerry Bold Launch
4th July 2008
IntoMobile - Mobile Phone News and Reviews

There's nothing like a hot, new product launch to boost your bottom line. Summer isn't just a blockbuster movie season. No, summer is traditionally the time of year when handset manufacturers and carriers roll out their hottest new wares for out-of-school kids and barely-working adults to drool over.

So, with Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry lineup, slated to go live with the BlackBerry Bold 9000 in the near term, RIM has announced that it expects the second half of 2008 to show the "strongest growth" of any 2H period. Not even the iPhone 3G's launch on July 11 seems to faze RIM CEO Jim Balsillie. Despite the iPhone 3G's much improved Enterprise support (RIM's bread-and-butter), Balsillie doesn't see the iPhone and BlackBerry demographics overlapping too much.

While we're not too sure how much or how little overlap there exists between the iPhone 3G and the BlackBerry Bold, we're sure that the BlackBerry Bold 9000 will be a hot-ticket this summer blockbuster season. With HSDPA, WiFi, GPS, 1GB onboard memory, microSD card slot, and high-resolution display powered by a revamped BlackBerry OS, the BlackBerry Bold 9000 isn't just another BlackBerry, it's RIM's renewed push for smartphone market share.

Could the BlackBerry Bold 9000 and iPhone 3G prove to be this summer's biggest-selling smartphones? Most likely. As for which handset will take top-billing as the most popular handset of 2008… we'll see.