Facing a strong competition from Apple’s iPhone,
Research-In-Motion has announced a plethora of new features that will make its
BlackBerry phones more attractive to the users.
Through various partnerships, RIM is bringing to BlackBerry entertainment,
various buying services and mobile social networking.
For example, RIM partnered with Ticketmaster, so the users
will be able to search, browse and buy tickets to various entertainment and
sporting events. Also, BlackBerry smartphone users can receive anytime,
anywhere email alerts with news and information about upcoming music, family
and sporting events.
Another partnership is the one with the biggest social-networking
site MySpace. In the near future, the two companies will offer a new MySpace
for BlackBerry application, which will be fully optimized to deliver rich
content and data to users on the go.
The application will offer a full messaging interface,
including comments, bulletins and messaging, real time status and mood updates
and it will be released in October.
Another partner that will help RIM to enrich the BlackBerry experience
is Slacker, which will provide a free Slacker Personal Radio application,
exclusively for smartphones, that will enable listeners to hear their favorite
Slacker radio stations wherever they go - even when not connected to a wireless
network.
The Slacker application will provide BlackBerry smartphone users in the U.S. with a
robust, high-fidelity personalized music discovery and listening experience
pulling from over 100 expertly programmed Slacker stations, over 10,000 artist
stations or their own custom-created stations.
The deals also came as CNBC television reported that RIM
would launch its high-end BlackBerry Bold handset in the United States
in October. RIM intends to expand its user base, beyond business customers.
However, it remains to be seen if the new features will
manage to do the trick of attracting new customers.
Also, RIM unveiled on Wednesday its first ever flip smart
phone, the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220. The announcement was made at CTIA, in San Francisco.
The 4.6 OS that runs on the phone makes it possible for
users to edit and create Microsoft Office documents with Dataviz' DocumentsToGo
software. With an upgraded BlackBerry server, it also supports HTML e-mail.
BlackBerry Pearl
8220 measures about 3.9 by 1.9 by .7 inches, weighs 3.6 ounces, and features up
to 16 GB of storage via the microSD slot.
