The Vodafone Blackberry is in town

Vodafone Malta launched its Blackberry packages yesterday and is expecting to see everyone carrying the US multifunctional gadget soon.

"We want to see everybody in Malta with a Blackberry in their hands," Vodafone's southern Europe director general Larry Bensadon said at the launch yesterday.

The tiny, multimedia smartphone, was developed in Canada and has taken the globe by storm. The gadget incorporates, in a small body, both a hand-held computer which can access internet and e-mail and a mobile phone.

The phone will be on sale from Monday.

The company will be offering three packages with two different smartphones: The Blackberry Curve 8310 and the BlackBerry Pearl 8110.

The Blackberry enterprise server package is aimed at corporate clients, the Blackberry professional software, for growing businesses and the Blackberry internet service for smaller businesses and individual users.

"We are confident that the Blackberry solution will provide our customers with the necessary tools to stay in touch with colleagues, friends and family from wherever they are," Vodafone Malta CEO Inaki Berroetta said.

The Blackberry internet service is designed for smaller businesses and individuals, allowing customers to access up to 10 supported corporate and personal e-mail accounts (including popular ISP e-mail accounts such as Yahoo! Mail and Google Mail).

The Blackberry enterprise server package is "targeted specifically for organisations that manage their own e-mail servers" and the Blackberry professional software is for growing businesses that want a mobile solution and "manage their own e-mail servers and have up to 30 mobile employees".