The BlackBerry 7130 is a successor to the 7100 and, like that device, comes in the candy bar format. Unlike the earlier phone, however, it runs on the XScale processor from Intel Corp, with a clock speed of 312MHz, where the previous device ran on a RISC-based ARM processor at 200MHz (there are indications it was a Texas Instruments OMAP processor).

It has an alphanumeric rather than Qwerty keyboard and uses the company’s SureType technology for accuracy and speed of texting. It is a quad-band GSM device with noise cancellation for call clarity, auto-sensing of ambient lighting for the purpose of setting the back-screen light on the phone and the ability to accept third-party apps, though of courser they will need to have been ported to RIM’s proprietary OS.

That said, James Hart, director of enterprise marketing at the Waterloo, Ontario-based company, pointed out that it already has some 500 ISVs as part of its app developer program, 120 of them in Europe, so companies choosing the new phone for sales force and field force automation should have several options to choose from. Of course, with 2G or 2.5G rather than 3G data rates, they will clearly need to be specially crafted for the device.

The new phone supports both the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution for push email, in which an enterprise has a BlackBerry Enterprise Server on its premises to suck mails from the corporate email server and forward them to the device, and the BlackBerry Internet Solution, in which the end user merely gets Webmail forwarded to the phone.

Peter Rampling, head of SME marketing for O2 Plc in the UK, said the carrier sees the real business opportunity for the 7130g, as it is known in its O2 flavour, on the BIS side, which is typical of the SME market, and has an SME pricing scheme as well as an enterprise one to support that perception.

The corporate versions [of the BlackBerry devices] are already pretty well ensconced, whereas SMEs will go for this phone because it looks good, he began. SME is still a largely untapped market.

On contracts with BIS rather than BES push email, O2 is giving away the phone and charging subscribers 39.75 pounds ($74) a month, which includes 500 minutes of inclusive voice calling, plus another 12.77 pounds ($24) a month for up to 5MB of Webmail delivered to the device.

Rampling added that, factored into the 5MB monthly ceiling, subscribers should remember that BlackBerry devices use data transformation (PowerPoint to JPEG, for instance) and compression to reduce the volumes transmitted, something that Windows Mobile 5.0-based smart phones do not currently feature, for instance.

This is in fact the second device from RIM on the XScale platform, the first being the EDGE-enabled 8700 handset launched earlier this year in the US and various European markets. RIM was at pains to clarify, however, that the 7130g from O2 is not the same phone as the 7130e, a CDMA/EV-DO device launched in March in the States by Alltel Corp, a rural mobile operator headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas.