A BlackBerry For The Masses

Just as I predicted, the smartphone competition is getting tougher every week since Palm released its long-awaited Pre, Apple pushed out its third-generation iPhone 3G S two weeks ago and Nokia unwrapped the ribbon on three new feature-rich handsets.

Today, Research in Motion (RIM) debuted its newest BlackBerry, the Tour, a 3G-handset built specifically for users who haven’t yet made the smartphone jump. It's a savvy move as non-smartphone users still outnumber smartphone adopters at this point.

Here’s RIM’s president and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis on RIM's strategy: "With its striking design and exceptional performance, the new BlackBerry Tour will offer a compelling choice for the growing number of wireless customers looking to upgrade their existing cell phone to a smartphone.”

So in layman's terms, RIM doesn't aim to entice current iPhone users or compete with its own user base. It wants the zillions of users still hanging onto to that basic cell phone.

That definitely has to give Motorola leaders a new headache given that's Moto's prime market these days. A competing BlackBerry device isn't anything to dismiss.

The Tour supports high-speed 3G EV-DO Rev. A networks and 3G UMTS/HSPA (2100Mhz) in the United States, and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM networks abroad. The expansive connectivity is tied to the fact that Tour will be available from both Sprint and Verizon Wireless — a unique move to say the least. High-end smartphone players, including RIM, have tended to make exclusive one or two-year deals with carriers.

Tour users can do everything possible on previous BlackBerrys — email, instant messaging, social networking using a full QWERTY keyboard and the highest resolution display yet on a RIM device.

It’s got a 3.2 MP camera, expandable memory supporting cards of up to 16 GB and 32GB cards when they become available.

RIM’s BlackBerry Media Sync lets users synch music from Apple’s iTunes and Windows Media Player and comes preloaded DataViz Documents to Go, which provides access for editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

Sprint’s offering it up for $199.99 to new or upgrading customers taking a two-year agreement, and then slashing $150 off the price in rebates (making the final cost $49.99).

Wowza: That's quite a smartphone bargain price when compared to Apple cutting prices on its second-generation iPhone to $99 for new AT&T subscribers, and more than a bit cheaper than Pre and certainly much cheaper than the high-end Nokia devices that now sell without any carrier subsidy.

In fact, $50 is the average price of Motorola's feature-rich phone lineup — a product line it said it intended to expand on this year.

I tried getting Tour pricing information from Verizon, but its BlackBerry product page wouldn’t load. So I called customer service and they didn’t know about the handset, but said pricing should be available in a week or so.

Maybe Verizon is waiting to see how sales of the iPhone are going (there are rumors it’s trying to snag an iPhone distribution deal with Apple) or maybe it wasn't sure how cheap Sprint would go on its handset?