According to an IDG report, year over year shipment growth for the BlackBerry grew by 35.7%.  In Q3 ‘08, 14.6% of smartphones sold worldwide were BlackBerrys.  In Q3 ‘09, 19% of smartphones sold were BlackBerrys.

In contrast, iPhone shipments grew by only 7.1%.  Now, don’t get me wrong…  7.1% growth in this economy is pretty darn good.  It’s 400%, or, 5 times less than what the BlackBerry did, but, still pretty good none the less.

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BlackBerry Shipments Grew 400% Faster Than The iPhone In Q3 is a post from: RIMarkable

It comes as no big surprise that Sprint has officially announced the BlackBerry Curve 8530.  Unlike Verizon, however, they haven’t given a release date.  I would think that it would come out before BlackBerry Friday, but, you never know when it comes to Sprint.

Sprint Announces The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is a post from: RIMarkable

For those of you that follow Research in Motions stock price, you know that it has been rough for the the Waterloo, Ontario based company over the passed 5 or 6 weeks.  Back on September 23rd, RIM’s stock (RIMM) was up over $88 per share.  Yesterday it closed at $57.61.

That being said, RIM’s board has approved a stock repurchase of common shares valuing up to $1.2 billion.  That comes to about 21 million shares based on current market prices.  RIM can commence with the repurchase starting next Monday, Nov. 9th.

I am not an investment professional, nor do I offer financial advice.  I guarantee, however, this will be discussed heavily on CNBC today, so, you may want to tune in.

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RIM To Buy Back $1.2 Billion Worth Of Common Stock is a post from: RIMarkable

Research in Motion and Verizon Wireless officially announced the BlackBerry Curve 8530.  The device will be available November 20th and will cost $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a 2-year activation.  My guess is that the new BlackBerry Curve will pick up right where the old BlackBerry Curve left off and become a big seller for Verizon.

The big new feature in the BlackBerry Curve 8520 is most definitely the Wi-Fi and this device will be the first full QWERTY BlackBerry with Wi-Fi on Verizon’s network.  For some strange reason RIM decided not to include a LED flash to go along with the digital camera, although it is only 2.0 mega pixels and probably really doesn’t matter that much.

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is definitely geared towards consumers and will probably do very well with them because of the price and the success of it’s predecessor,  the BlackBerry Curve 83xx, which happens to be the best selling BlackBerry device ever.

Check out a detailed list of BlackBerry Curve 8530 features after the jump:

• Easy-to-use, highly tactile, full QWERTY keyboard and touch-sensitive trackpad for reliable, responsive typing and navigation
• 256 MB flash memory and 528 MHz next generation processor for enhanced performance
• Supports voice-activated dialing and Bluetooth® (version 2.1), with support for hands-free headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals
• 3G-enabled (EV-DO)
• Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
• GPS with support for location-based applications, including geotagging pictures and Verizon Wireless’ VZ NavigatorSM service
• 2.0 megapixel digital camera with zoom and video recording*
• Advanced media player for music, pictures and videos, with dedicated media keys and a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, plus BlackBerry® Media Sync, which makes it easy to quickly sync music from your computer to the smartphone**
• Access to BlackBerry App World™, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry® smartphones. Categories include games, entertainment, social networking and sharing, news and weather, productivity and much more
• Access to e-mail, messaging (IM, SMS, MMS) and popular social networking sites (including Facebook and MySpace)
• Rich multimedia capabilities, including dedicated media keys smoothly integrated along the top of the handset, giving customers an easy, convenient way to control their music and videos
• Support for BlackBerry services with access to up to 10 supported e-mail accounts, including most popular ISP e-mail accounts such as Yahoo! ®, Windows Live™ Hotmail®, AOL® and Gmail, and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support, which provides advanced security and IT administration features for corporate deployments
• Expandable memory via hot swappable microSD™/SDHC memory card slot, supporting up to 16 GB cards today and expected to support next generation 32 GB cards when available

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Verizon Officially Announces BlackBerry Curve 8530… Available November 20th is a post from: RIMarkable

Yesterday we put up a post, based off of a report from Infoworld, that the much anticipated Verizon Droid would require a $15 fee on top of the $30 per month data plan fee for those who want to connect their device to a corporate Exchange system.   Well, according, to a post over on Gearlog, this is not the case.

There’s a lot of confusion going on around the Internet about the Motorola Droid’s service plans. Some people are saying that if you want to connect to a Microsoft Exchange account, data will cost $45 a month instead of $30.

This is wrong.

Update: Exchange Sync On Droid Won’t Cost Extra For Consumers is a post from: RIMarkable

An interesting report from ComScore on Touchscreen Mobile Phone Adoption came out yesterday and a few things in the report kind of surprised me.

1. Touchscreen mobile phone adoption grew at a blistering rate up 159%.  Nothing really shocking about that.
2. The iPhone dominates  the market with 32.9% market share.  Yeah, yeah… Sounds about right.
3. The BlackBerry sits in 4th place with 7% of the market, only 1.7% behind the number 2 LG Dare and 0.8% behind the 3rd place LG Voyager. Completely wasn’t expecting that.

Of the 10 devices listed, the BlackBerry Storm received the most bad press, deservedly so, by a long shot.  For the Storm to come in 4th when it was such a bad device at launch and having been on the market for a lot less time than the three devices in front of it was more than just surprising.  It was actually a bit shocking.

This is probably due to the strength of the BlackBerry brand because no one else could have had a device suck that much, yet sell so well.  Hopefully the BlackBerry Storm2 will do better by the brand than did it’s predecessor.  Every report that I’ve heard about the BlackBerry Storm2 goes something like, “You know, it’s really not that bad“.  If that sentiment remains I think RIM will view the BlackBerry Storm2 as a success.

There Are Probably More BlackBerry Storm Users Than You Think is a post from: RIMarkable

Coming on the heels of the release of the Rogers BlackBerry Bold 9700, Rogers has cut the prices of the orginal BlackBerry Bold, the BlackBerry Curve 8900, and the BlackBerry Curve 8520.  The prices for each are $99.99, $79.99, and $49.99 respectively.  A three-year contract is required.

Rogers Cuts Prices On BlackBerry Bold 9000, Curve 8900, And Curve 8520 is a post from: RIMarkable

Just a day after Rogers released their branded BlackBerry Bold 9700, Bell has released their branded version.  Bell’s BlackBerry Bold 9700 costs $70.04 less  than Rogers at $229.95 on a three year contract, however, there are differences in the 3-year service plans.

Get more details here…

BlackBerry Bold 9700 Now Available From Bell is a post from: RIMarkable

I’ll be the first one to say how much I love Verizon’s network and pretty much recommend it to anyone who travels and / or needs to know that they are going to get a strong signal pretty much everywhere and never drop calls.

I will also say that all the crap that Verizon installs on their devices in an effort to control or lock down what said devices can do natively unless, of course, you are willing pay an additional fee, is a horrible way for them to treat their customers and if T-Mobile or AT&T work well enough for you, go with them.

Case in point, the Verizon Droid, which happens to be coming out this weekend, can connect to Microsoft Exchange without any help from Verizon, however, because Verizon says that the Droid is “primarily a consumer phone”  they are going to charge you an extra 15 bucks per month to do so even though they aren’t providing you additional service.  To be completely honest Verizon probably spends less money supporting customers who pay the $15 Active Sync charge simply because they don’t have to actively block you from accessing Exchange Servers which the Droid can do out of the Box.

If only AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint didn’t suck when it comes to network coverage in comparison to Verizon.

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Almost Thought For Minute That Verizon Wasn’t Going To Lock The Droid Down is a post from: RIMarkable

The popular BlackBerry internet radio client, Pandora Radio, has been updated to version 1.1.2 and now works on the  BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Storm2.

The version on BlackBerry App World hasn’t been updated with the new release, so, if you want to check it out, head over to www.pandora.com directly from your Storm or Storm2  BlackBerry Browser.

Pandora Updated To v1.1.2 Now With Support For OS 5 is a post from: RIMarkable