RIM this week announced that the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm will be available later this fall through exclusive deals with Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and Vodafone in Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand.

"The BlackBerry maker has been under pressure to come up with something special to compete in the increasingly crowded high-end mobile market - especially after Apple launched onto the scene in 2007 with the first iPhone," writes ZDNet's Natasha Lomas. "By doing away with the keyboard for its inaugural mobile, Apple left rivals scrabbling to keep up with the consumer frenzy for touchscreen devices."

"RIM's first touchscreen device features a 'clickable' screen that the company says simulates the feel of a physical keyboard," writes Network World's Brad Reed. "The Storm can connect to either EV-DO Rev. A or HSPA 3G cellular networks and features 1GB of onboard memory storage and a card slot that allows for up to 16GB of additional storage."

More here from Sky News ... more here from the FT ... more here from AFP ... and the press release is here.