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WSJ: BlackBerry With Touch Screen Planned

Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 12:20 PM - by

RIM plans to launch a BlackBerry that has a touch screen display, like the iPhone, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

The touch screen on the iPhone has made it an big hit, and RIM may be planning to duplicate that in a BlackBerry called the "Thunder" scheduled for the third quarter.

The move appears to be only part of RIM's strategy to fend off Apple. Recently, RIM announced the BlackBerry Bold, a 3G phone that syncs more easily with Apple's iTunes.

"As the company delivers more devices on the platform, they will deliver more radical designs and will aim more at the general consumer," said Gus Papageorgiou, an industry analyst with ScotiaBank. "The advantage Apple had was a cool form factor, and that advantage is slowly eroding."

Once again, it seems, companies are chasing Apple, which has proven to be dangerous in the past. No sooner do companies think they've caught up when Apple moves on, going to where the figurative ice hockey puck will be, not where it is now.

Even so, it's not a bad idea for RIM to make a phone that will appeal to corporate users who want more "cool" factor. It will also give IT managers a good reason to stay with the BlackBerry product and hold the line against the surge in iPhone demand by employees.

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Tiger said:

member since 17 Jun 2003 with 1018 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri May 16, 2008 12:38 pm

Anybody else feel like Steve Jobs should change his name to Simon and just kick off the world's largest game of Simon Says?

Or would it be Pied Piper?

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri May 16, 2008 1:12 pm

wow, if they really think apples cool form factor was their advatage, they truly are lost. It is the OS and the multitouch GUI, neither of which RIM has, or will have thanks to apples patents. And while congratulate themselves forcopying apples form factor and synching with apples software (LOL), apple will have already changed the game by turning its phone into a mobile computing platform with 200,000 registered devlopers.

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Dirt Road said:

member since 24 Oct 2002 with 1239 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri May 16, 2008 2:15 pm

Guest, you got it. Seems like the clueless press has dubbed any phone with a touchscreen "the next iPhone killer."

To be honest, I thought that the iPhone would have a keypad or something similar before it came out, but Apple would make it work better. One of my more fanciful thoughts was that they would have an iPod-style click wheel that could be used as a rotary dialer (complete with sampled whirrrr sounds from a classic Western Electric rotary phone) by flipping a "stop bar" into place, as well as the usual iPod-like functions, but would mostly be voice-driven. Retro and modern at the same time, and the old folks would have bought them in job lots.

Apple could make a phone like that, and eventually might. But few companies could even think of it, and fewer still would have the design/engineering chops to bring it to market. It's much the same as the current iPhone. Apple wasn't the first to come up with a touch screen, let alone a cell phone, but it took Apple to make the idea work well. Eventually, some other company will figure out it's "interface, interface, interface" and knock Apple off its perch, but I don't see it happening with the current or near-future crop of competitors.

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