Is RIM Looking to Compete with the Apple iPhone?

Research In Motion (RIM) has stepped up their attempts to make The Curve (BlackBerry 8300) appeal to all walks of BlackBerry life.

Some of the expected applications such as WiFi and GPS are not included.

Rim’s famous battery life may be impacted by media functions.

The BlackBerry Curve officially announced by Research In Motion (RIM) will be available Through AT&T initially in the United States. The device includes a new Blackberry addition of a 2 megapixel camera with 5x digital zoom, a currently available and supported A2DP Bluetooth audio profile, a newly designed media player, an upgraded desktop manager, based on the popular Roxio Easy Media Creator, that now provides CD ripping and photo editing functionality. Photos taken from the device can be instantly uploaded to your Flickr account, by way of Yahoo! In terms of value-added services, Research In Motion has really stepped up their attempts to make this device appeal to all walks of BlackBerry life. However, some of the expected applications such as WiFi and GPS are not being included.

At first glance, the iPhone dose not compete directly with the BlackBerry. However, if Apple can replicate push IMAP email, without the need for Exchange and can synch with Outlook/Yahoo/Google/Calendars etc., it might seriously dent the non corporate Blackberry market. Both devices will need to get better than 3 hours of standby as the iPhone and BlackBerry seem to step into each others market. All the application advances in PDAs are great time savers and space savers, however, media applications do impact implemented battery technology operating time.