BlackBerry Storm hitting Best Buy November 16th?
To be fair, that's what looks to be the in-stock date, not the street date as we're told. We got our hands on a print out of a Best Buy product sheet which clearly shows the BlackBerry Storm's store in-stock date.
Context & Ripple Effects
RIM's first touchscreen BlackBerry has been leaking steadily for weeks — a full spec rundown of the Storm 9500 and 9530, an Engadget hands-on, and internal marketing positioning documents have all surfaced. This Best Buy product sheet is the first concrete retail signal: a mid-November in-stock date that would put the Storm on shelves for the holiday quarter. The timing matters because the device is RIM's direct answer to the iPhone's carrier exclusivity — Verizon's counterpunch heading into its biggest selling season.
First-order effects
- Verizon and Best Buy get a flagship touchscreen handset on shelves by November 16th, giving Verizon an iPhone-class competitor for holiday shoppers who want a touchscreen but not AT&T.
- Retail channel details (in-stock vs. street date) become the next battleground of leaks, as carriers and retailers race to control launch messaging around RIM's most-hyped device.
Second-order effects
- AT&T and Apple face pressure to respond with aggressive iPhone 3G availability and pricing during the same window, since the Storm gives fence-sitters a credible alternative.
- Other retailers (and rival carriers) will push to match or undercut Best Buy's launch positioning, turning the Storm launch into a multi-channel distribution fight rather than a single-carrier event.
Third-order effects
- If the Storm sells well, it validates the 'carrier-locked answer phone' playbook — every major US carrier demanding an exclusive touchscreen flagship from RIM, fragmenting the market into per-carrier variants like the 9500/9530 split already suggests.
- The leak-driven rollout (specs, hands-ons, internal docs, then retail sheets) points toward launch cycles where carrier and retailer systems effectively pre-announce products, shrinking the window for controlled marketing.
The trend: Carrier-exclusive touchscreen flagships are becoming the centerpiece of the 2008 holiday smartphone wars, with retail-channel leaks increasingly setting the public launch narrative before official announcements do.