The new BlackBerry Pearl 3G

A grounds up new platform christened as BlackBerry 6 will take BlackBerry
phones to a new level of user experience. It will be launched in Q3 of this
year. Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO, Research in Motion (RIM) made this significant
announcement at the companys mega annual conference, WES 2010. He said RIM is
working on BlackBerry 6 that will usher in a new premise in its smartphones with
a path-breaking user interface and a whole lot of unique rich user experience
features.

RIM also announced another significant launch, the BlackBerry Mobile Voice
System 5 with voice over Wi-Fi calling. BlackBerry MVS 5 which works with
Ciscos Unified Communications Manager is aimed at providing business users the
ability to use their regular desk phone number and extension from their
BlackBerry smartphone. Company sources say that with the new MVS 5, an employee
will be able to use a single work phone number shared between their desk phone
and BlackBerry smartphone and can make and receive enterprise calls on their
BlackBerry smartphone over a Wi-Fi connection, adding to the existing capability
available over cellular networks.

The company said that it came out with such an application because,
increasingly the mobile workforce and the growing number of employees working
from home faced challenges in terms of accessing their work phone numbers
remotely. With BlackBerry MVS 5, calls made through it are routed through the
corporate phone system or the private branch exchange (PBX) leading to
significant savings on long distance and international roaming charges.

The deployment of MVS 5 is said to increase user productivity as they will be
able to leverage their BlackBerry devices more effectively. RIM says that
employees also benefit from the convenience of a single work phone number shared
between their desk phone and their BlackBerry smartphone. Employees can be more
reachable through their work phone number and can even enjoy the convenience of
extension dialing from their BlackBerry smartphone as well as the flexibility to
move calls from their BlackBerry smartphone to their desk phone. Company
officials are bullish about this application and pretty confident that MVS 5
will transform intra office voice communications using BlackBerry devices.

The other significant announcements at this years conference include RIMs
smallest form factor BlackBerry phone, the Pearl 3G smartphone with industrys
leading collaborative features. RIM is betting on the compact form factor and
expects existing and new customers opting for the new phone. According to
Lazaridis, There is a growing consumer interest in smartphones and the fact
that more than three quarters of the people in the global mobile phone market
are still buying handsets with traditional alphanumeric keypad, and we think the
new BlackBerry Pearl 3G addresses a substantial market opportunity.

RIM will bring these products to the market in the summer of 2010. The Pearl
devices with 3G also sport a new power ecosystem like the Wireless N support, a
GPS, microSDHC support and 256MB of flash memory, and will have a 624 MHz
processor. RIM executives called the Pearl 3G as an engineering marvel as they
have packed almost every conceivable featureboth for enterprises and consumers
use. RIM also launched the BlackBerry Bold 9650 Smartphone for CDMA customers.
In all, WES 2010 saw the growing clout of BlackBerry phones and demonstrated the
innovative ways BlackBerry devices are used by enterprises across the world.

Shrikanth G

The author was hosted by RIM in Orlando, USA

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in