Canadian carrier Rogers Wireless is now offering Research In Motion's newest smartphone, the BlackBerry 7780 Wireless Handheld, on its GSM/GPRS network.
According to the companies, the tri-band (850/1800/1900) BlackBerry 7780 features a large color display that supports a resolution of 240 x 240 pixels and 65,536 colors. As with all BlackBerries, it has a backlit QWERTY keyboard for incredibly thumb-typing.
It also includes the usual push email, phone, SMS, browser and organizer applications. The BlackBerry 'push' technology enables email messages to be delivered automatically. With most other types of mobile devices, users must pull or request email be brought down to a handheld.
The BlackBerry 7780 costs $499.99 with a two-year service agreement. The device joins Roger's other RIM offerings, including the BlackBerry 7280, BlackBerry 6280 and BlackBerry 6710 on its GSM network, and the BlackBerry 950 which operates on the its Mobitex network.
According to the most recent statistics by market research firm Canalys, RIM came in fourth during the first quarter of this year for mobile device sales worldwide, as it succeeded in doing better at penetrating the European market.
North America accounted for fewer than 80% of shipments compared to over 90% a year earlier. Overall, RIM jumped from only 2.2% of the market with 94,670 handhelds shipped to 6.4% of the market with 379,990 devices shipped. That's an increase in shipments of over 300%.
Gartner reported earlier this year that RIM, which passed one million subscribers a couple of months back, thrived in the fourth quarter of 2003 with nearly the same total number of devices shipped in that one quarter as all of 2002. RIM also posted the strongest growth rate among top-tier vendors in 2003, as shipments increased 121% from 2002, and approximately 35 to 40 % of recent RIM shipments were upgrades of older RIM devices.
