The Wall Street Journal's Sara Silver and Cassell Bryan-Low today broke the news that Research in Motion plans to launch a touchscreen version of the BlackBerry, called the BlackBerry thunder or BlackBerry 9500, as a direct competitor to the Apple iPhone.

"The new BlackBerry, slated for introduction in the third quarter, will be sold exclusively through Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and Vodafone Group PLC in Europe," the article states.

And to be fair, the WSJ references this article at The Boy Genius Report as the original source.

"We doubt that this is the end for a real QWERTY on the CrackBerry," notes Wired's Charlie Sorrel. "Instead, it shows that BlackBerry is feeling the heat from the iPhone and possibly releasing a copycat device. Let's just hope there's a decent web browser and an iPod in there too..."

More here from Silicon Alley Insider ... more here from eFluxMedia ... more here from InformationWeek ... more here from Reuters ... and more here from infoSync.

Image above (which is not in any way an actual photo of the actual device...) is from The Boy Genius Report.