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BBGeekcast: July 25, 2008 – Episode 22

Posted by Joe on July 25, 2008

Talk about a slow week in BlackBerry news. It was supposed to end with an announcement from Rogers regarding the BlackBerry Bold. So I stayed up well past my bedtime last night, eagerly awaiting it, only to hear nothing. I woke up extra early this morning, and again nothing. The latest word calls for a July 29th announcement. So we’ll see.

By the way: If you’re interested in co-hosting the BBGeekcast for a week, drop me a line. Jpawlikowski at bbgeeks — you can figure out the rest.

So click on over here to hear the BBGeekcast (8 min, 23 sec)

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Highlights include:

We talk about the Bold a lot, and RIM’s marketing strategy behind it. Basically, it seems like the timing of WES this year just wasn’t right. They had to make the announcement then. Yet, they had to have known that the device was still at least two months away, which means that there are still plenty of places things can go wrong. And, judging from what we’re hearing about AT&T — September 1 release — things did go wrong, though not necessarily on RIM’s part.

Contrast this with the iPhone, which was announced in June and released about a month later. Up until WES both Apple and RIM had done a great job of hyping their respective devices. There were leaks everywhere, and even though many of them were fake, they still got people talking. But Apple waited a bit longer, and made sure they’d have the least possible time between announcement and release.

This seems to be what BlackBerry is going for with the Thunder. Word is that they’ll start a marketing push in September for an October release. The preliminary marketing is already in place, though. People are psyched about the Thunder. Now, if RIM can keep the announcement and release within a month of each other, I can see the Thunder doing very well.