08/21/2008, 11:45am, EDT
Thursday, August 21stRogers ships Bold at twice iPhone's price
Rogers today became the first carrier in North America to ship the BlackBerry Bold, RIM's first smartphone to ship with 3G for GSM-based phone networks. Apart from using the faster HSDPA connection to download apps from a Rogers portal, the Canadian edition of the handset follows the reference model closely and centers around a much sharper 480x320 LCD as well as GPS, Wi-Fi, 1GB of permanent, lockable onboard storage and a two-megapixel camera with flash and video capture.
The phone comes with the latest BlackBerry OS update and an allegedly more desktop-like web browser as a result; Windows users also have access to an iTunes Sync app that will automatically load the internal memory or microSDHC cards with music from the jukebox software.
Despite comparisons to the iPhone 3G by observers, however, Rogers prices the phone at $400 when paired with a combined voice and BlackBerry data plan worth at least $45 per month. The price is roughly twice that of the $199 8GB iPhone and positions the phone as a direct replacement for the business-oriented BlackBerry 8800 and 8820 rather than the entertainment-focused Apple handset.
AT&T is rumored to have similar pricing for its own launch, which is expected weeks later.
Filed under: iPhone, gadgets, mobile phones
Other story tags: BlackBerry, Research in Motion, Rogers
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Nothing new here.
The pricing makes perfect sense for its market. I think it's going to take another year or two of the iPhone being around for it to leak enough onto the business side to affect prices there more. Still, businesses don't really want or need the multimedia stuff or want to deal with a virtual keyboard.
Smart Move
I worked for a Rogers dealer and every time a new BlackBerry launched they were near impossible to keep in stock. BlackBerry users are the only computer people that can rival Mac fans. I had customers who were totally addicted to their Berries. Until they get a backlog of stock there's no reason not to collect some extra cash and help keep the stock problem from being a complete outage.
8800
Considering the 8800 is still priced at $349 this doesnt really come as much of a surprise.