CTIA Had Actual News This Year – Hopefully WES Will be Better!

CTIA last year was pretty boring in terms of BlackBerry announcements. Usually CTIA is right before WES and RIM would hoard up all their news for their own event. This year RIM really turned things around with Balsillie’s keynote and the announcement of the BlackBerry App World. That combined with Shazam, QuickPlay Primetime2Go, TicketMaster, Salesforce Mobile, and the Skype announcement made for a pretty impressive show from RIM and their partners. Its good to see applications getting the focus instead of new devices since the only new device they had was the 8230 which was already released.

I take CTIA’s success as a good sign for WES this year. BES 5.0 is already out of the bag practically and OS 5.0 looks like it is following shortly thereafter. Here is to hoping that RIM releases the 9630 this coming May or at least announces it!

I sadly did not manage to make it to CTIA this year. I am not a big fan of trade shows (too much walking) and we have enough bars in Manhattan. 🙂 On the other hand Ryan from Negri Electronics attended and had a very promising story to report. He went to the RIM booth and was treated quite nicely as you can see from his report below:

As a fellow blackberry user I would like to post a comment on the way I was treated at the blackberry Both at CTIA. At CTIA I was extremely busy, but I got to see and speak to most people at the booths of the major manufactures of cellular devices, as well as some of the Chinese “knock-offs”. While roaming the halls, I was on my phone constantly. Setting up meetings, texting, emailing customers, talking on the phone and on 3G that gives the battery a severe beating.

As I made it back to the Central hall I noticed my battery was going Orange (on the bold) and I needed to act fast. I went to the BlackBerry booth and stopped at the Sling Box location and noticed 3 phones being shown on display and hooked up to chargers. I asked the representative if I could borrow a charger quick, just to get it make in the green so I can continue to work. His response will be the most memorable of any rep in the entire show, “just ask the gentleman at the desk and he will give you a fully charged battery to swap with your dead one”. I honestly thought he was joking. What kind of company (besides ours) is totally demoted to customer service that would offer such a thing? Well BlackBerry has their stuff together, I walked over there and before I could finish asking him for a replacement, he reached in the drawer and handed me a brand new (scratch-less) battery. I was in complete amazement that it actually was fully charged and brand new; (it even lasted longer than my other one).

I just need to say that regardless of what everyone is thinking or starting to think about blackberry, they aren’t going anywhere. Their stock took a hit during the slow times, but they are back on track and ready to push forward with a Roadmap of great devices. I look forward to reading your comments.

If you have your own story to share about RIM at a trade show or event please share it in the comments!