Is the BlackBerry Pearl already dead?

It is now a few months after the release of the new BlackBerry Pearl (9100 and 9105) but almost no one is buying this model. There are plenty of reasons for this, the primary one being the fact that it has been picked up by none of the major US carriers. But even more so the reviews for the phone while positive, always carried the hint that the Pearl was the perfect phone for “someone else”, and that they were obviously not going to give up their Bold for it. As such the Pearl is almost unused. Pixelated was one of the first applications to support the Pearl, but use of the Pearl has remained minimal. A look at downloads from late August show the Pearl still not doing as well as obscure models such as the 8350i and the GSM version of the Storm1. It is also not doing as well as recently launched models such as the 9800 and 9300. At this point there looks to be little reason for RIM to continue working on this line, and we may have already come to the end of this form factor’s life.