BlackBerry says 60% of Fortune 500 are testing or using BBES

Was Thomas Wolfe wrong? Can you go back home again? BlackBerry sure hope so. At one time, you couldn't think about conducting business without a BlackBerry smartphone helping to get work done on the road. But along came the Apple iPhone and Android, and BlackBerry started losing the business customers that had made the platform so popular. Much of the blame has to fall on the former co-CEOs of RIM, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. The latter even said back in May 2008, "The most exciting mobile trend is full Qwerty keyboards. I'm sorry, it really is. I'm not making this up."

But thanks to new management and the new BlackBerry 10 OS, the Canadian based OEM is trying to impress those companies that gave them the boot, replacing them with the Apple iPhone or an Android device. With the QWERTY equipped BlackBerry Q10launching in the U.S. on Wednesday via T-Mobile, BlackBerry says that 60% of the companies on the Fortune 500 are currently using or testing out the BlackBerry Enterprise Service that allows these firms to use the Q10 on their own network.

BlackBerry is counting on big sales numbers from its loyal users who are familiar with the BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard and have been waiting for a phone with the QWERTY keyboard and the new BlackBerry 10 OS. T-Mobile has the BlackBerry Q10 for sale online and in stores while Verizon will launch the device online this Thursday. The carrier's stores will get the phone on June 10th. Meanwhile, AT&T started accepting pre-orders on Wednesday for the Q10 with Sprint offering the handset later this summer.

source: Reuters