With yesterday’s release of the BlackBerry Bold 9900 on T-Mobile, RIM is finally offering a touchscreen device on all 4 of the major wireless carriers in the United States. (Actually on all 5 US carriers with the 9850 already released on US Cellular). This is an important move for RIM as their previous touchscreen phones were carrier exclusives (the Torch on AT&T and the Storm on Verizon).

This address a serious problem that RIM was having in the United States. With Verizon (until recently) not getting any new devices in over a year and a half, and the 9800 only being available from AT&T, the market share of BlackBerry has been decreasing. In other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom RIM has had released the touchscreen 9800 on all carriers, and instead saw their marketshare rise. Neither of these countries is all that different from the US culturally or economically, so the difference is most likely due to the availability of touchscreen BlackBerrys.

Now that RIM has their carrier situation figured out in the US, they should see their marketshare increase in the region.