Although T-Mobile Germany tipped their hand slightly back in October when the BlackBerry Curve 8900 showed up on their website, today is still an exciting day. That’s because T-Mobile Germany and RIM have officially announced the release of the BlackBerry Curve 8900, formerly known by it’s codename: Javelin.
For those not in the know, the Curve 8900 features BlackBerry Bold-power and screen resolution in a Curve form factor, minus the 3G. The BlackBerry Curve 8900 will cost a one-time charge of EUR 4.95 with a 24-month contract on the Relax 200 Plus rate with BlackBerry Webmail S and EUR 359.90 without contract. You can read the full press release after the jump or check out some handy BlackBerry Curve 8900 reviews via the link below.
At this point, it doesn’t really matter when the BlackBerry Storm launches, as long as it comes out before Black Friday. However, BGR has posted a Verizon slide indicating that ‘Storm Chasers’ may be able to get their touchscreen BlackBerry of choice a few days before that.
* 123 corporate Verizon stores will be “pre-launching” the device on November 20th. That means that the 123 stores will have Storms in stock to demo for customers and to pre-order the device for them. This is only for high-end VZW customers, and people that got the mailing that went out. The general public, as we’re informed, can not just “mosey on down.”
* November 24th (and November 25th?) is the general availability date which includes corporate sales, telesales, and indirect dealers.
BGR goes on to say that final pricing would be $199 with a mail in rebate, coming very close to what we had posted earlier today. Hopefully it’s all coming together for the Big V, and everyone can get a nice early Christmas present.
Rogers is gearing up for the holidays and they’re going to make a big push with the BlackBerry Bold and RIM’s latest addition the BlackBerry Pearl Flip. Rogers will also be releasing the BlackBerry 8320 which is a blue Curve with Wi-Fi. The device will be $99.99 on a 3 year contract.
I love the idea of the Curve finally getting Wi-Fi. With more VoIP companies hitting the market, we’re all going to be saving money on our minutes and keeping in better touch with our friends via cheap data.
These releases and promotional deals may be just what Rogers needs to win the smartphone wars this holiday season.
Finally, AT&T is releasing the service books to run native AIM and ICQ clients on BlackBerry. If you’re an IM fiend, I suggest heading over to mobile.blackberry.com and downloading both apps. The clients are working smoothly with the BlackBerry OS and they compliment GTalk and Windows Live Messenger, making you and your device the ultimate IM machine.
AT&T bought regional carrier Centennial Communications Corp last week for $944 million. The purchase was made to improve AT&T’s coverage in the Midwest, Southeast, and Puerto Rico. By purchasing an existing infrastructure and subscriber base, carriers like AT&T can maintain subscriber growth in the current economic climate for far less than the cost of doing it themselves.
AT&T has indicated that Centennial subscribers will see no ill effects in the carrier swap, but will eventually have to transfer to AT&T’s billing system.
Partnership Leverages Expertise in Monitoring and Protecting Email Communication Platforms for Businesses of All Sizes
GSX Groupware Solutions and Double-Take Software today announced a partnership to work together on solutions to provide protection to businesses for email monitoring and recovery. GSX Groupware Solutions is the only company offering global email management and monitoring software for all major communication platforms at the same time (including BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange, and Sametime), and Double-Take Software is a leader in offering failover and recovery solutions. CIOs and IT directors who manage the support for communications servers can rely on both companies to meet email monitoring management and recovery needs. The partnership will combine best-in-class monitoring from GSX with the expertise of Double-Take Software products to replicate, failover and recover communications data. The joint solutions will help ensure maximum uptime for companies of all sizes.
Coming straight out of Johannesburg, RIM and MTN jointly announced this morning the availability of the BlackBerry Bold in South Africa. The South African contingent of the BlackBerry Nation will love the Bold’s 3G, Wi-Fi and integrated GPS capabilities.
“The BlackBerry Bold exudes style and accomplishment with its glossy black exterior and satin chrome frame. Its stunning display, sophisticated user interface and newly designed full-QWERTY keyboard all combine to make it a phone that any power user would be proud to carry,” says Pieter Verkade - MTN SA Chief Marketing Officer.
While pricing information is not yet posted on the site, you’ll be able to find it at the link below shortly. Make sure to check out our exhaustive BlackBerry Bold review as well.
It’s not uncommon to find two opposing financial analysts on RIM’s stock in even the best of times, so it should come as no surprise that during the current global economic crisis we can’t get two analysts to agree on anything.
First we have Apple shareholder Howard Lindzon of Knight’s Bridge Capital, who is not so much down on RIM as he is long on Apple. However, he does state that RIM is “chasing Apple”, and should not cannibalize their sales with the BlackBerry Bold and Storm, but rather focus on improving the BlackBerry Curve. Hmmm. (via Yahoo!)
HowardForums member Matrix2004 has posted that BlackBerry Storm 9530 pricing information is up on Verizon’s test site. The magic number? $219 on a 2 year contract, $289 on a 1 year contract and $519 straight up. These prices do not include any rebates, so the final price may be lower. You can see for yourself by clicking the link below and using 85001 as your area code.
HOWEVER, once there, you will notice a lack of graphical assets and placeholder text from the BlackBerry 8830, which means the price may be placeholder as well ($219 is an odd number…). In addition, Matrix2004 himself has said that this may not be the final price, so don’t set your hopes too high.
What can we take from this? If the price is correct, this Christmas Verizon and RIM are going to see a lot of BlackBerry Storms. Also, if Verizon had announced pricing information when they were sending out Storm promotional emails, people wouldn’t be creeping their testing site looking, and there wouldn’t be so much confusion. At this point we have to ask if Verizon is still trying to build hype or if they’re not 100% on the ball.
We might not yet have a solid release date for the BlackBerry Storm 9530, and Verizon may only be inviting select people to their private sale, but reassuring signs that we are nearing the fateful day continue to appear. For example, Verizon has now posted a BlackBerry Storm advertisement on their homepage. Hopefully sometime soon the launch date and pricing information will present themselves as well.
AT&T bought regional carrier Centennial Communications Corp last week for $944 million. The purchase was made to improve AT&T’s coverage in the Midwest, Southeast, and Puerto Rico. By purchasing an existing infrastructure and subscriber base, carriers like AT&T can maintain subscriber growth in the current economic climate for far less than the cost of doing it themselves.
GSX Groupware Solutions and Double-Take Software today announced a partnership to work together on solutions to provide protection to businesses for email monitoring and recovery. GSX Groupware Solutions is the only company offering global email management and monitoring software for all major communication platforms at the same time (including BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange, and Sametime), and Double-Take Software is a leader in offering failover and recovery solutions. CIOs and IT directors who manage the support for communications servers can rely on both companies to meet email monitoring management and recovery needs. The partnership will combine best-in-class monitoring from GSX with the expertise of Double-Take Software products to replicate, failover and recover communications data. The joint solutions will help ensure maximum uptime for companies of all sizes.
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