By Martin Vedris
SYDNEY: Vodafone Australia has announced it is about to receive a third shipment of BlackBerry Storm smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM), to meet what it calls high demand.
“We’ve seen truly outstanding demand for the latest smartphone from BlackBerry – the exclusive BlackBerry Storm – and we’re delighted to say that we’ll be able to meet demand throughout the holiday period with this new shipment of devices, due early next week,” said Vodafone Australia CEO, Russell Hewitt.
Hewitt said that overall, Vodafone has noted a strong trend towards smartphones among Australian consumers.
“Devices offering an array of multimedia functionality and web-based applications are easily our best selling devices to contract customers,” he said.
To coincide with the new Storm availability, and encourage pre-Christmas mobile phone purchases, Vodafone Australia is ‘three months free access’ on 24-month contracts. The offer is valid until February 28, 2009.
The three months free offer applies to Vodafone’s $79 Cap, Vodafone’s $79 Internet Cap, $39.95 for 5GB Mobile Broadband plan or a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook offer of 5GB of data for $69.95 per month.
The BlackBerry Storm has been on sale in Australia since 5 December, and now free firmware downloads are available to improve the performance of the phone.