September 18th, 2008
Has the iPhone delayed the Blackberry Bold's US debut?
Even though RIM’s Blackberry Bold is currently available in 13 countries, the U.S. ain’t one of them, and that could be because the iPhone 3G is hogging AT&T’s 3G network, according to a story in yesterday’s Toronto Globe and Mail.
“Both devices use the same next generation (3G) network technology, but it now appears AT&T wasn’t prepared for the bandwidth-hogging Apple device and doesn’t have the resources to launch the Bold until it cures its iPhone issues.”
Now even allowing for a few grains of salt for home team booster-ism (RIM, despite recent proclamations, was actually not founded by John McCain, and is actually a Canadian company), there’s enough here to ring true. Purely circumstantially, this theory would jibe with the leak of an AT&T handset launch map which says that the Bold’s AT&T launch, once thought to be in October, is now scheduled for November (via, Boy Genius Report).
If the delay is true, one would think this presents more of an opening to other highly-anticipated phones due out over the next few months, including HTC’s Dream (aka, the Google phone) for T-Mobile and another Blackberry device, the touchscreen-based Storm, for Verizon.
The analyst quoted in the story, Peter Misek, of Canaccord Adams, theorizes that AT&T can run 20 Blackberries on its network for each iPhone 3G, due to the fact that the iPhone 3G “lacks the data compression technology that is a hallmark of Blackberry devices,” and that AT&T could have to spend up to $1 billion to bring its 3G network up-to-speed.
Shameless Canuck booster-ism or savvy insight to AT&T 3G network woes? Stay tuned.
Josh Taylor is director of CBS Interactive Business' technology sites – ZDNet and TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
| 09/18/08
