Competition heats up for BlackBerry

USA TODAY writes about new threats to Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry e-mail devices as the new 7130c was launched by Cingular Wireless for $199 with a service plan.

The article notes the competition, which includes Motorola's (MOT) much-anticipated Moto Q, Palm's (PALM) Treo 700p, and Nokia's (NOK) E50.

While Gartner said "sales of smartphones, which can usually handle e-mail, instant messages, Web pages and other data, jumped more than 500% from the first quarter of 2004 to the first quarter of 2006, Lewis Ward at IDC pointed out that "only about a third of U.S. cellphone owners use those features. Gartner analyst Phillip Redman said, the market "is still pretty young."

RIM hopes to keep growing by entering new markets, Lazaridis says. Thursday, RIM said it would bring BlackBerry into Japan. It has recently made similar pushes into China, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.

The article looks at RIM's efforts in the face of these new threats.