Bold due in two weeks at AT&T Mobility

The much-delayed but much-anticipated BlackBerry Bold will begin selling at AT&T Mobility on Nov. 4 “for as low as” $300, with a two-year contract and mail-in rebate.
The price tag will place the Bold on par with the more expensive, 16 GB iPhone 3G device, at the very top of AT&T Mobility’s fall portfolio.
The device had launched outside the United States, but Research In Motion Ltd. has said that the device was delayed due to extensive testing on the carrier’s network to ensure that 3G connectivity problems – such as those that apparently plagued the launch of the iPhone 3G – were resolved prior to launch.
RIM has led the U.S. smartphone market, partly through its ubiquitous presence at the nation’s top-tier carriers and partly through a constant output of new devices with various configurations. But Apple said yesterday that it had sold more iPhones than all of RIM’s various models in the calendar third quarter.
The Bold is being positioned for both consumer and enterprise markets and will be sold at AT&T Mobility retail stores and online, as well as through the carrier’s business-to-business teams.
The Bold runs on HSDPA networks in the United States and 60 countries worldwide, including Japan and Korea, the carrier said. It provides assisted-GPS, Wi-Fi connectivity and can run simultaneous voice and data functions.
The device supports the carrier’s AT&T Navigator Global Edition and AT&T Mobile Music services.
RIM and the carrier touted the device’s re-designed QWERTY keypad, its external colors, materials and finishes (CMF) as well as its 624 MHz processor and 1 GB onboard memory, expandable to 16 GB with a microSD card.
In a recent report on the U.S. smartphone market, analyst Avi Greengart at Current Analysis characterized the Bold as “an extremely full-featured BlackBerry.”