The latest UMA-enabled RIM, the 8900, has been getting rave reviews in the press:The rumor is that the phone will be available at T-Mobile shortly, perhaps as early as next week. So all of you text/email refuges from iPhone, get ready for a very cool new Blackberry.
[Ed. Note: The phone went on sale at T-Mobile Feb 12 and promptly sold out]
A recent post by Ben Patterson, the self-proclaimed “Gadget Hound” writing for Yahoo Tech, posited that the desk phone may be going the way of the dodo bird. To reinforce is point, Ben refers to an article from industry analyst firm Gartner suggesting that enterprises will be supporting more mobile phones than desk phones in 2011. Interestingly, one of the concerns Ben had about this transition, the ability to get coverage in the office, is addressed with UMA. And the phones Ben referred to for such a service? RIM Blackberries.
At UMA Today, we don’t believe the desk phone will go the way of the dodo (ie, completely disappear off the face of the earth).
We believe the desk phone will be relegated to a position in the office hierarchy similar to a fax machine. It’s still there, it’s still plugged in and ready for use, but employees just don’t use it much at all anymore.
