Research In Motion (RIM) took the wraps off the BlackBerry Storm last week. The Storm is the latest device from RIM and it has no physical keyboard, a total departure from every other wireless email device from RIM. Obviously the Storm is designed to fight back against the mind share and growing market share of the Apple iPhone, which also has no physical keyboard, but which is drawing rave reviews in many quarters. Perhaps RIM-aligned customers will be less likely to jump ship to the iPhone now that RIM has an iPhone-like device on offer.

The RIM keyboard has always defined BlackBerry devices, thus RIM has had a tremendous amount of organizational inertia to overcome to get this device to market (“That’s not the way we do things around here!”). The RIM keyboard was successful during its fight for market dominance against Palm — you’ll remember that Palm devices didn’t have keyboards but relied on special writing for text input, at least until Palm acquired Handspring and started putting keyboards on the Treo devices. I think Palm is still going … but I know that RIM definitely is.

While RIM has clearly innovated to get the Storm to market, it will need to demonstrate that its on-screen keyboard works better than the iPhone one, but maybe not that it works better than a physical RIM one. I have an iPhone 3G, and I hate the on-screen keyboard (yeah, it’s cool and all that, but I actually want something that works for work). While I can type perfectly with two thumbs on the RIM BlackBerry, the best I can get on the iPhone is one finger typing, even in landscape mode. It just doesn’t work the same as the BlackBerry. From a use case point of view, I am more than willing to type email messages and blog posts on the BlackBerry, but using the iPhone 3G for that is a revolting thought. And thus I don’t do it.

It will be interesting to see how the Storm plays out, and I look forward to trying one in comparison to the iPhone 3G. My sense today is that a real keyboard is still critical, thus I think the BlackBerry Bold is a better next-generation device for wireless email users.

Recommendation
– RIM-aligned organizations can use the Storm as a way to blunt calls for migration to the iPhone 3G.
– A physical keyboard is still critical when using a wireless device for email and text input