Blackberry OS6 & the Blackberry 9800, is Blackberry losing it's grip?

One of the perks we get to enjoy at TodaysCloseout is being able to admire, explore and interact with many of the latest wholesale cell phones & smartphones. Blackberry has always been a brand we respected and admired for the rock solid smartphones they create, with excellent quality hardware and reliable software for the business user.

In recent times however, we have noticed how many of the manufacturers including Apple, HTC, Samsung, and LG, have all been making very affordable feature rich touchscreen cell phones, with advanced

user interfaces, great email and social networking capabilities, and qwerty keyboards, not to mention the many Google Android phones being pumped into the market, that are begining to make even the flagship Blackberry devices such as the Bold 9700 look and feel dated.

The blackberry numbers are out, and although Blackberry has seen wholesale growth internationally, the bad news is that it has been losing North American market share to Apple, HTC, and Samsung wholesale unlocked cell phones.

Which brings us to Blackberry OS6, the upcoming edition of the Blackberry operating system, and the Blackberry 9800 device, which will have both a full touchscreen as well as a slide out

qwerty keyboard. We have been informed that the official announcement by Blackberry will

take place on August 3rd at 11am EST.

We know that when Blackberry released the Storm, and Storm 2 touchscreen devices to

compete with the Apple iPhone, they were

simply no competition to the very slick Apple iPhone 3 and iPhone 3GS.

We love Blackberry, and we hope they release a winner this time, but we wonder whether the Blackberry 9800 with OS 6 will be an update that puts blackberry ahead of the game, competing head to head with the iPhone 4 and the many other great devices out there, or is it going to be too little too late?