Ailing Canadian outfit, Research in Motion, are desperately clinging on to their share of the smartphone market as the mobile mega-brands; Samsung and Apple, close in around them.

RIM’s latest flagship model which they’ve sent out to brave the market is the BlackBerry Bold 9900. It is jam-packed with the very latest and greatest Research In Motion software. However, the basic design concept of the Bold 9900 is fundamentally flawed and, is just no in line with the rest of smartphone competition. Where once upon a time the BlackBerry, a fave among corporate types and high-flying execs, was the be all and end all as far as mobile technology was concerned, times and styles have now moved on. These days the smartphone trend is very much one of large glossy touchscreens; which was started by Apple back in 2007 with the release of the iPhone.

Offering innovative business solutions; including emails and document viewing was not enough for BlackBerry if they wanted to compete with the mobile big boys.

Fast-forward to 2012 and the Bold 9900 follows pretty much the same configuration as the original BlackBerry from way back in 1999. In fairness to RIM this new Bold is less than 1cm thick, so it is far sleeker than its predecessors meaning BlackBerry have realised the importance of the phones aesthetic.

The Bold 9900 does have a touchscreen, but at 480 pixels high and 640 pixels wide, it’s far too small to run in the same race as the competition if you compare it say, the Samsung Galaxy SII; or the Apple iPhone 4.

The same goes for the keyboard, unfortunately. In a design feature which has always been synonymous with BlackBerry, the QWERTY keyboard on Phones like Google’s Android Milestone and LG’s Windows Phone 7, with their slide-out keyboards, beat it hands down.

Selling mobile smartphones, at a time when the market is so utterly saturated with high-end, high-concept technology was always going to be difficult for RIM; who don’t seem to be able to cling on to their little market niche any longer.