RIMPIRE Striking Back!

Is it just me, or does it finally feel like the RIMPIRE is Striking Back? After months and months of negative sentiment in the media and a stock price that's been continually deflating, my BlackBerry senses have been tingling and my smartphone intuition has been giving me this feeling that things are finally starting to come around.

There are a lot of factors at play here, not all of which are in RIM's control. Of course, we're FINALLY seeing BlackBerry 7 Smartphones hit the market, and we've been seeing a lot of positive reviews out there for them. Obviously, these are the Best BlackBerry devices EVER (upgrade now!). We've also watched Google announce its intent to buy Motorola, HP kill off webOS devices, and Steve Jobs resign as CEO of Apple. Add it all up, and it's crazy times in the smartphone space. I'm not sure anybody knows exactly how things are all going to play out, but today we're seeing RIM's stock price above $30 - the last time it traded above $30 was June 17th. 

For the longest time I wanted to avoid scrolling through my RSS reader - aside from BlackBerry fan sites mainly staying positive, it was pretty rare to come across any BlackBerry-related stories that weren't touting doom and gloom for RIM. But these last few weeks have felt different. The new BlackBerry 7 Smartphones appear to be selling like hot cakes (were hearing lots of stories of the Bold 9900/9930 selling out in stores) and with more rumors popping up of the QNX-powered BlackBerry Colt, there's more belief out there that RIM is going to be able to get through their technology transition and keep on fighting in the smartphone wars for years to come.

Overall, I'm feeling pretty good today about the state of BlackBerry. Am I alone here? I hope not. I don't think I am. But I want to know for sure. So vote on the poll above and sound off in the comments with your thoughts. Oh, and if you want your own RIMPIRE Strikes Back T-Shirt, you can download the logo here to get your own made.

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