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Blackberry too ripe for European tastes
You have a mobile, a PDA and a laptop? You need a...

By Heather McLean

Published: Wednesday 03 October 2001

Research in Motion's (RIM) Blackberry has been ridiculed by key members of the European mobile community as ungainly and under-powered.

The messaging gadget's size is larger than the average PDA and it has limited functionality in comparison to commonly used European devices such as mobile phones with WAP or SMS.

Nad Nadesan, managing director at SMS software company Peramon Technology, said: "There are fundamental differences between devices in Europe and the US. Here they have to be as small as possible, multi-functional and discrete. Blackberry is neither here nor there. RIM needs to make its mind up on what Blackberry is, a messaging or voice device."

Bernt Ostergaard, analyst at Giga Telecommunications Services agreed with Nadeson: "RIM and BT are really making a messaging service for GPRS when you might as well have a RIM service on a GPRS phone."

Nadesan added: "Europeans wouldn't be seen dead using one, it's like a brick. Plus if your company offers you a company SIM card, you're going to put it into a mobile phone that you already have in your hand, not a dedicated device for messaging that you have to buy."

Blackberry devices are available in Europe to corporate users and are running over BT's GPRS infrastructure, as apposed to the pager service it runs in the US.

RIMs only hope will be to use the European launch of its Blackberry messaging device as a guinea pig and then tries to tempt its US customers into upgrading to GPRS.

Ostergaard said: "In the US, AT&T Wireless and Singular are both switching technology from TDMA to GPRS. Voicestream will eventually upgrade its GSM network to GPRS.

"RIM is looking for an upgrade path for Blackberry as there's no way it can develop its current pager technology. RIM can get advanced trial and usage data in Europe with BT then go home and take that upgrade path with them."