14 DAY TRIAL // On Friday, Apple and AT&T released into the wild the latest iPhone in the series, 3G S, and also lowered the price tag of the older iPhone 3G model to $99 (down from $199). While the shift is expected to affect the market share of BlackBerry's maker, Research In Motion, it seems that the Canadian manufacturer is not scared of the new price tag for the high-end Apple device.
While announcing the fact that RIM registered 3.8 million new BlackBerry subscriber additions during the last quarter, the company's co-CEO Jim Balsillie also talked about the efficiency of its devices and the wide carrier support they enjoy at the moment. RIM has “had lots of offers for the BlackBerry that have been free and $49 and $99 ... so I don't really fret those kinds of things,” stated Balsillie when pointed that Apple had lowered the price of the iPhone at $99.
As many of you might already know, the company had a buy-one, get-one-free offer with Verizon Wireless, which helped it register a 55 percent market share in the United States in the smartphone area. Moreover, during the following quarter, the phone maker expects for a number of 3.8-4.1 million customers to be added to its data base of subscribers, some of which should be attracted by the upcoming BlackBerry Tour that should be launched on Verizon and Sprint's airwaves during the summer.
“We're excited about the plans we have in place for the second half of the fiscal year. We have a number of exciting new products planned,” Balsillie said. Even so, he also admitted that the competition in the market is getting more intense, and also added that almost 80 percent of the newly included subscribers were consumers rather than enterprise IT managers, yet the company plans to maintain the momentum through the upcoming handsets.