Verizon Slashes BlackBerry Storm Price
RIM's touchscreen Storm is now more competitive with the $100 Apple iPhone 3G from AT&T. — Verizon Wireless is cutting the price of the BlackBerry Storm to $99 in order to better compete with AT&T's iPhone 3G. — The Storm is the first touchscreen BlackBerry from Research In Motion.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Storm, RIM's first touchscreen BlackBerry from its October 2008 hands-on debut, has been drifting toward impulse pricing all year: Amazon was already selling it at $99 with no rebate back in February, per that earlier price drop, so Verizon's move is less a surprise than an admission that street price had outrun the official one. An April firmware update showed RIM patching the device's rough edges after launch criticism.
First-order effects
- Verizon's Storm now carries the same $99 entry price as AT&T's $100 iPhone 3G, removing upfront cost as a reason for upgrade-eligible buyers to pick the iPhone over RIM's touchscreen answer.
- RIM gets a carrier-scale push behind its first touch device at exactly the moment its software roadmap is accelerating — OS 5.0's tabbed browser beta landed this week and Mac desktop support is confirmed as coming.
Second-order effects
- AT&T cannot easily cut the iPhone below $100 while it holds exclusivity, so the battleground shifts to what Verizon can pitch against it — and AT&T's own record gives ammunition: its Visual Voicemail failures are confirmed even though AT&T has denied fault, and a widely read columnist declared the carrier a failure just two days before this price cut.
- T-Mobile's mid-tier play, the $149.99 Pearl 8220 launched last October, gets squeezed from above as flagship touchscreens fall under the $100 line.
Third-order effects
- If $99 becomes the standard subsidized entry point, handset price stops being the differentiator between carriers and the real contest moves to exclusive devices and network/service reputation — the same dynamic that led AT&T to sideline BlackBerry hardware like the 8820 in favor of the iPhone back in 2007.
The trend: Carrier-subsidized smartphones are converging on sub-$100 pricing, shifting US competition from sticker price toward exclusive handsets and carrier service quality.