We may be getting closer and closer to the BlackBerry 10 launch event on January 30th but that isn't stopping RIM from continuing to promote BlackBerry 7. Over on their YouTube channel they have released a couple of new promo videos, each one focusing on a specific feature of BB7. BlackBerry Tag and Wikitude are featured once again and this clearly goes to show that although many markets around the world are set to launch BB10, there are also some where BB7 is still going to be the focus. That said, until they release some lower end BB10 smartphones, the BB7 devices are still going to be a huge part of the business for RIM.
Take here in the UK for example. The Pay as You Go market is huge. With the BlackBerry Curve 9320 selling for around the £100 mark on some networks it offers remarkable value for money. Sure, BlackBerry 10 is getting all the hype here on the blogs and with the worlds media but it looks like RIM are not forgetting about pushing BB7 devices.
In addition, it is going to take some time to roll out BB10 across every carrier in the world that currently supports BlackBerry. I know that RIM have confirmed that about 250 networks are already testing BlackBerry 10 and I can't see any reason why they all wouldn't commit, but this may not be straight away for various reasons.
With some markets still using 2G, those consumers may well be happy for some time with their BlackBerry Curve 9220's. I suppose some of these locations may well be dependant on the price of the handsets in which case we once again come back to the question of when RIM announce cheaper/lower end BB10 devices. We know that they will release six BlackBerry 10 smartphones this year, but does that mean six separate models or will we see GSM and CDMA variants making up the numbers? Either way, it's an exciting time and nice to see RIM not putting all there eggs in one basket.