Research-In-Motion, or RIM, has slowly seen its once unabated position as the leader in smartphones slowly eroded away by competitors such as Apple, HTC and Samsung.  Though maintaining their popularity in the business community because of their popular and easy-to-use email management Business Enterprise Server software, the average consumer has been very unimpressed with their Blackberry smartphones, forgoing previous releases like the Blackberry Storm, the Blackberry Tour, and the Blackberry Bold 2 for products like Apple’s iPhone 4 and HTC’s Evo 4G.  RIM has lost market share to products from competitors that have successfully promoted the experience of owning a smartphone and all that you can do with it besides email.

Enter the Blackberry Torch.  Many industry analysts see the touchscreen and keyboard-enabled Torch as a long awaited response to the product offerings of Apple and HTC.  Featuring the new Blackberry 6 OS that promises to offer a rich user experience, graphical user menus and unique tools to make social networking easier, RIM hopes to make a strong statement to the smartphone market that they too can provide an ‘experience’ with their products.  Can the Blackberry Torch help RIM gain ground in race some analysts say they have already lost?  Consumers will make that call.