Research In Motion is trying again to come up with a consumer-friendly touchscreen smartphone that is an iPhone killer after a swing and a miss with the original BlackBerry Storm.

RIM?s BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone launched today, Oct. 28, in Verizon Wireless Communications stores, online at http://www.verizonwireless.com and through other business sales channels. The BlackBerry Storm2 with the new BlackBerry OS 5.0 gives the BlackBerry touchscreen platform a facelift with hundreds of hardware and software updates, including new SurePress clickable display technology and built-in Wi-Fi.

?RIM has a heritage of a certain type of form factor, PDA-style devices with functional hard-button QWERTY keypads,? said Kevin Burden, Oyster Bay, NY-based practice director of mobile devices at ABI Research. ?That?s their bread and butter, that?s what they made their name on and that?s what they?ll continue to make their name on.

?With the Storm2, the company is trying to branch out as part of its push to break out from business users to consumers,? he said. ?The Storm has always been targeted strictly at the consumer market?it was never supposed to be a device to replace the heritage hard-button QWERTY keypad devices.

?The reason why RIM put out the Storm is because touchscreen is the hot input interface, and while touchscreen isn?t new, Apple found a way to make a capacitive touchscreen work on a small device?the iPhone gets people jazzed about it all over again and made sure that every handset manufacturer had to have one.?

Verizon Wireless, for one, is hoping that the Storm2 will be able to compete with the iPhone, which has an exclusivity agreement with AT&T.

RIM?s BlackBerry has quietly become the leader in smartphone market share in North America even though the buggy first incarnation of its much-anticipated Storm was nothing to write home about (see story).

ABI Research?s 2009 forecast for smartphone market share in North America predicts that RIM?s BlackBerry will have 53 percent of the market, with 18.4 million devices; Apple?s iPhone 29 percent, with 10.1 million devices; Microsoft's Windows Mobile 11 percent, with 4 million devices; Palm's webOS 5 percent, with 1.5 million devices; and Nokia?s Symbian 1 percent, with 235,000 devices.

Google?s Android is more difficult to pinpoint, as most of its devices are coming out in the fourth quarter, and the exact timing of some of those releases has not been announced. That said, ABI predicts that it will have 3 percent market share, with about 900,000 units.

?That might be low,? Mr. Burden said. ?Next year is going to be a better year for Android.?

For now, though, RIM is the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer in North America. And if the BlackBerry Storm2 is a hit, it could help RIM gain even further in the North American market.
 
?The BlackBerry Storm was RIM?s first shot at a touchscreen device, and the company has never been one to rush anything,? Mr. Burden said. ?It never feels like it?s in a race to be first, and it went years without offering features people expect from a smarpthone such as a media player, camera and GPS functionality.

?Email synchronization, back-office applications and security have always been the draw, but the company felt it needed a progression in the consumer market, so RIM went to the Storm, which wasn?t necessarily ready,? he said.

Existing BlackBerry Storm customers will be able to update their handsets to the new BlackBerry OS 5.0 software via Web software load at http://www.blackberry.com/update, BlackBerry Desktop Manager or from Verizon Wireless's download site at http://www.verizonwireless.com/storm.

BlackBerry OS 5.0 includes typing accuracy and selection improvements, as well as usability and visual enhancements such as inertial scrolling, spin boxes that make it easier to set dates and times, gradient shading on buttons and more use of animation.

RIM claims that it has improved the BlackBerry Browser with faster JavaScript and CSS processing, as well as support for Gears and BlackBerry Widgets.

Customers running BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 can now set follow-up flags, manage e-mail folders, access remote files (Windows Shares), forward appointments and view calendar attachments.

?RIM figured out that its old OS didn?t operate well on a touchscreen device, so OS 5.0 will make the touchscreen interface more user-friendly, with more visual elements such as animation, scrolling and drop-down menus to make it a lot easier for Storm users to get done what they need to get done,? Mr. Burden said.

?The browser is supposed to be improved, and people will notice, it?s that much of an improvement,? he said. ?Does it put into the same category of an iPhone or an Android device?

?As much as BlackBerry says it?s a consumer device, its heritage is the business user and it still starts with the mobile business user and is opportunistic within the consumer space.?

The BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone is available for $179.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement with Verizon Wireless on a voice plan with an email and Web feature or an email and Web for BlackBerry plan.

Data plans for the BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone begin at $29.99 when added to any Nationwide voice plan.

?RIM will say that it is very important to bleed its business into the consumer market, but they have other models out there that are consumer-focused such as the Flip, Pearl and even the Curve, which still follows BlackBerry?s heritage form factor, so it?s surprising how well the device has done among consumer ranks,? Mr. Burden said.

?RIM is very well positioned in the North American market?that is their bread-and-butter market, and like Apple, it does best in its home territory,? he said. ?The difference between RIM and Apple, the reason for RIM?s success is not because they came out with most advanced features on a smartphone or the biggest app store or the sexiest looking devices, not at all.

?The core BlackBerry applications are mobile email and connectivity to back-end corporate applications, as well as security.?