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Vodafone to serve up BlackBerry Christmas feast

Vodafone to serve up BlackBerry Christmas feast The new BlackBerry Storm touchscreen mobile phone will be in many Brits' Christmas stockings — thanks to a new deal involving Vodafone.

The British network operator failed to win the contract to be the exclusive network carrier for Apple's iPhone last year but it hasn't lost out this time around.

The good news is that British consumers can take out a contract to own a BlackBerry Storm for just £35 a month, making it cheaper than the iPhone which O2 gives away free with a £45-a-month contract and the G1 which T-Mobile is likely to offer at £40 a month.

The bad news is that BlackBerry Storm owners will be handcuffed to a two-year contract whereas the G1 and the iPhone come with only 18-month minimum contracts.

However, Vodafone and RIM — the Canadian manufacturer of the BlackBerry — obviously think that the Storm has staying power.

For starters there's the revolutionary "clickable" touchscreen that prevents a user accidentally sending an email or making a call just by touching the screen.


Jens Schulte-Bockum, Vodafone's global head of terminals, is confident that after the initial publicity blitz the Storm won't blow out.

"This will be one of the bestsellers, if not the bestseller, in the contract market for Christmas," he told The Guardian.

"We have very aggressive plans for it."


Nick Read, who heads Vodafone in the UK, told the same paper: "I very much see this as a mainstream product in the consumer market.

"You have all the robustness of BlackBerry but with multimedia and you have a touchscreen that actually works for texting and email. From my perspective, this is really meeting the needs of a more sophisticated consumer."


The deal is the culmination of 12 months' hard graft after Vodafone asked BlackBerry to come up with an iPhone killer.

This was about the time that the credit crunch began and there are concerns that the economic downturn will limit the number of people interested in a high-end device.

Nevertheless Vodafone believes that as the mobile is aimed at consumers and the business community it will still sell well.

Vodafone news posted on 08 October 2008

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