It's vital for RIM to keep advancing both its platform and its devices, given the steadily growing competition from Microsoft with its Windows Mobile operating system, and the spectacular success of the Apple iPhone.

Microsoft, too, is ramping up its efforts to attract consumers to its mobile offerings, by hiring a new vice president of marketing tasked to do just that for its mobility business and by distributing a software application, from its Zumobi spin-off, which is designed to make it easier for Windows Mobile users to browse the Web. On the enterprise side, Microsoft has just released System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, designed to make Microsoft handhelds as fully manageable as its desktop and laptop PCs.

Apple is expected to unveil the 3G version of its wildly popular iPhone in June, just weeks after the RIM conference. While still focusing on consumers, the release of a software development kit and new features due shortly in Version 2.0 of the iPhone's operating system are intended to make it easy to integrate and secure the iPhone on corporate networks.

RIM for years has been talking about the BlackBerry being "more than e-mail" but turning that theme into more than a set of PowerPoint slides has been a slow process. The company has been trumpeting a just-announced deal with software giant SAP, and at least two sessions at the conference will focus on this. The two companies are jointly developing a native BlackBerry version of SAP's enterprise CRM software, tying it into the smartphone's e-mail, address book, and calendar programs and with backend customer data stores. The companies are expected to do the same with SAP's ERP and supply chain applications.

As 3G networks expand in North America, deploying such applications and connecting them over high-bandwidth cellular data networks to corporate data stores becomes more feasible and affordable.

Despite the challenges, RIM is clearly doing something right.

The conference comes just before the close of RIM's first fiscal 2009 quarter, which despite the stumbling economy in the United States, is expected to be even better than the record-setting end-of-year results last March. Then, RIM reported yearly revenue of US$6 billion, almost exactly double the 2007 number, and profits of US$412.5 million, a 105 per cent increase over the previous year (72 cents per share compared with 33 cents last year). In that report, RIM said it expects the first quarter of fiscal 2009 revenues to be in the US$2.23 to US$2.3 billion range, and profits in the 82 to 86 cents per share range.

Just as importantly, during the fourth quarter, RIM added nearly 2.2 million net new BlackBerry subscriber accounts, with 50 per cent of these from non-enterprise customers, according to RIM co-CEO James Balsillie. By the end of fiscal 2008, 38 per cent of the total account base of just more than 14 million were from outside the traditional enterprise category.