Touchscreen BlackBerry: “It’s important to be flexible”

As we reported earlier, RIM has patented a “touchscreen devise” for its popular BlackBerry e-mail device. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, co-chief executive Jim Balsillie said “It’s important to be flexible to customers’ demands. For sure we’re looking at all kinds of different device packaging and presentation, I think getting religious on packaging is not the way to go. It’s really user preference-oriented.”

Balsillie did reveal some insight about the future by saying the company would introduce devices based on HSDPA, a high-speed wireless technology that is popular in Europe and used in the United States by No. 1 wireless service AT&T. “Certainly going to HSDPA is something that’s very important to us in the near term,” Balsillie said.