Research In Motion the maker of the BlackBerry email solution is the darling of the Canadian economy. I worked for them for almost two years after my graduation. The company is a mix of the best talent in Canada and a young vibrant group of 20 somethings. If I was to buy shares of RIM back in Jan 2005, I would have made 400% gain. I really miss my BlackBerry and their corporate culture.

Today they released news of their new handset the BlackBerry Bold, model number 9000. This handset is not much different from the Curve but does have a significant upgrade in specs:

• Networks: UMTS: 2100 / 1900 / 850MHz, GSM: 1900 / 1800 / 900 / 850 MHz, GPRS, EDGE and HDSPA networks
• Wi-Fi: 803.11a/b/g enabled
• GPS: Internal GPS with BlackBerry Maps
• Size: Length: 144mm, Width: 66mm, Thickness: 14mm
• Weight w/ battery: 133g
• Battery: 1500mAhr
• Battery Life: Standby 13 days, Talk time 5 hours
• Display: HVGA 480×320 pixels
• Media Player Audio supports: .3gp, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro/WMA 10, MIDI, AMR-NB, Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+
• Media Player Video supports: DivX 4, Div X 5 & 6 are partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264 and WMV3
• Camera: 2.0 megapixel with 5x digital zoom and flash
• Bluetooth: Version 2.0 supporting stereo audio via A2DP and AVCRP
• USB/Data Transfer: USB port charges as well high-speed data transfer via USB A to mini USB
• Browser: HTML browsing will allow viewing of movies and clips from websites builtfor mobile streaming, RSS feed support as well.
• 128 MB Flash memory plus 1 GB on-board storage memory
• 16GB microSD/SDHC card support
• 624-MHz StrongARM processor with full MMX

They sure have moved away from only catering to hardcore business email users, this BlackBerry will also appeal to the regular consumer. With a nice camera and now the ability to support iTunes with Media Sync, this will definitely be a worthy competitor to the 3G iPhone. The processor is two times faster then the BlackBerry Curve, for fluid, vidid video and multimedia purposes. It is announced that AT&T will be the exclusive retailer in the US and im sure Rogers will be the first to get it here in Canada. In the mobile space, RIM is certainly my favourite.