Edible Apple

Back in the late 80’s, the 30/30 club in Baseball (30 homers + 30 steals) was considered an incredible feat, and players who were able to pull it off were often considered the cream of the crop. In tech, the 100 million club seems to the modern day equivalent to what was once a heralded hardball achievement.

Just a few weeks ago, Steve Jobs got up on stage to deliver the WWDC keynote. While the iPhone 4 was undoubtedly the star of the show, one of the slides shown early in the presentation touted the fact that Apple has now shipped over 100 million iOS devices – that’s iPod Touches + iPhones + iPads. 100 million of anything is no joke, and the figure was brought up to drive home the point that the iOS platform provides an unrivaled number of potential customers for developers.

But Apple now has some company in the 100 million club.

Yesterday afternoon, RIM announced its earnings results from the quarter gone by and boasted that it has now sold over 100 million BlackBerry phones. While those 100 million phones aren’t all on the same platform, it’s still an achievement worth noting.

But arbitrary achievements aside, RIM’s most recent quarter was immensely successful, having shipped 11.2 million BlackBerry devices, setting a new quarterly record and representing a 43% increase from the same quarter a year-ago.

RIM noted that the bulk of its BlackBerry sales were to customers in the US, with about 40% of sales going to those outside the US. Breaking down its successful quarter, RIM attributed its impressive sales to high demand for its series of BlackBerry Curve phones.

RIM’s quarterly revenue checked in at $4.2 billion, representing a 24% increase over the same quarter a year-ago. It’s quarterly profits, meanwhile, increased by 41% up to $768.9 million.

Lastly, RIM hinted during its earnings conference call that it was working on 2 new premium devices that will supposedly begin shipping sometime this Summer. One is rumored to be the BlackBerry 9800 (pictured above), a touchscreen slider that might be called the BlackBerry Torch. Also rumored to be in the works is a BlackBerry tablet device aimed at competing with Apple’s iPad.