The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency within the United States Department of Commerce, will stop using BlackBerry phones later this year and instead supply workers with Apple’s mobile devices. In a memo relayed by Loop Insight, NOAA’s Chief Information Officer and Director for High Performance Computing and Communications said that support for BlackBerry phones will cease in May of this year. Apple’s iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S will replace the agency’s BlackBerry ...

When new CEO Thorsten Henis took the reins at Research In Motion, he immediately pointed to the smartphone vendor’s marketing strategy as an area the company needed to focus on if it hoped to regain share in key markets like the United States. The wheels on RIM’s recent marketing efforts had already been set in motion, however, and early reports suggest that the increased volume of familiar BlackBerry ads aren’t having the impact RIM was hoping for. Read on for more. (more…)

Mobile Web usage is on the rise, with users who access the Web through mobile devices having nearly doubled every year since 2009 according to analytics firm StatCounter. Web usage on mobile devices grew to 8.5% in January of 2012, up from 4.3% in the same month a year earlier. “While global Internet usage through mobiles is still under 10%, the pace of growth is remarkable,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. Apple leads the way in both the United States and United Kingdom, however Nokia is stil...

T-Mobile announced on Tuesday the company’s Valentine’s Day sale on all 4G smartphones and tablets. “T-Mobile has a commitment to make the 4G experience affordable and accessible to everyone, so this sweet deal on smartphones and tablets is our Valentine’s gift to consumers,” said T-Mobile’s senior vice president of marketing, John Clelland. “No matter where loved ones live, T-Mobile wants to bring them closer with unlimited talking, photo sharing, video chatting, texting, and mo...

Research In Motion executivess took the stage during BlackBerry DevCon Europe on Tuesday to clear up a few facts about the company’s success with its BlackBerry App World marketplace. RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins said BlackBerry App World is now home to more than 60,000 applications, which is a fraction of what’s available in the Android Market or iTunes App Store, and that BlackBerry devices are among the most popular smartphones purchased in the United Kingdom. RIM’s vice president o...

At last month’s Consumer Electronics Show, Research in Motion previewed the company’s upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 update, which we exclusively reported would land in mid-February. The anticipated update will give PlayBook users the ability to use Android apps that have been compiled for RIM’s platform, but getting developers on board remains the issue. RIM is taking steps to get the attention of developers, however, and one of the first is to offer free BlackBerry PlayBook tablets to ...

ComScore released its most recent U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share report for the three-month period ending in December, 2011. The research firm found that Samsung remained the top mobile phone vendor in the fourth quarter with a 25.3% market share — the same share as it held in the third quarter. LG’s market share dropped 0.6 percentage points to a 20% share for second place followed by Motorola, which fell 0.5 percentage points to 13.3%. Apple had the fourth largest share with a 12.4% market sha...

Research In Motion’s newly appointed chairwoman of board Barbara Stymiest vowed on Thursday that the changes sweeping the struggling smartphone vendor will continue. RIM announced late last month that company co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were stepping down from their roles as co-CEOs and co-chairmen of the board following more than a year of investor unrest. Replacing them atop RIM’s management team was Thorsten Heins, and Barbara Stymiest was named chairwoman of the board. Heins g...

Research In Motion released the first set of commercials from its new “Be Bold” advertising campaign on Thursday and while the ads feature new faces, they are nearly identical to the campaign RIM has been running for months. The Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone vendor was quick to point out that the team of four awkward superheroes that starred in an infographic RIM recently posted were not part of its upcoming advertising blitz, but perhaps they should have been. RIM’s new ads feature B...

Research In Motion’s latest BlackBerry 7 devices has=ve been granted Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 certification by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC). FIPS certification is required before a device can be used by a government agency in either the U.S. or Canada. ”The FIPS 140-2 certification for BlackBerry 7.0 and 7.1 illustrates RIM’s continuing commitment to providing industry-leadin...

Research In Motion’s newly appointed CEO Thorsten Heins said during his first day on the job that hiring a new marketing boss and revamping the company’s marketing strategy was among his first orders of business. If some of us were unsure why finding a new CMO and revamping RIM’s marketing efforts are such a priority, this new campaign should help clear things up. RIM on Monday introduced four new cartoon superheroes who will help the company spread the word about its products. Gogo Girl can...

Former Research In Motion co-CEO and co-Chairman Mike Lazaridis said in a recent interview that he had been planning to step down from his role at the helm of the company for several years. While speaking with The Record, Lazaridis confessed that he had been planning to relinquish his co-CEO role for several years leading up to January 22nd when RIM announced that Lazaridis and co-CEO Jim Balsillie were stepping down. Lazaridis said in the interview that he had been grooming new CEO Thorsten Heins for the CE...

Although Apple outsold all Android vendors in the fourth quarter, the Cupertino-based company’s share of mobile internet usage is reportedly beginning to slide. An analysis of last year’s Internet usage shows that in the United States, the proportion of Android mobile web visitors overtook Apple users by the end of the year, according to 51Degrees.mobi. The share of Apple’s iOS web traffic in December fell to 34.1%, while Android increased to 36.6%. In Europe, Apple remained ahead with 42....

Investors had been clamoring for Research In Motion co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to relinquish their co-CEO and co-chairman roles, and the company finally announced this past Sunday that Balsillie and Lazaridis were out, replaced by new chairperson of the board Barbara Stymiest and new chief executive officer Thorsten Heins. RIM’s stock plunged more than 13% when Heins introduced himself as the company’s new CEO, due in large part to a video interview during which he essentially ...