The BlackBerry is going from strength to strength in a fiercely competitive field.

Research in Motion (RIM), the group behind the mobile e-mail service and handsets, has 10.5 million subscribers, having added 1.45 million in the past quarter.

It is aiming to add 1.65 million more in the third quarter.

The financials look similarly healthy.

RIM's second-quarter net profit grew to $287.7 million (£141 million) from $140.2 million a year earlier. Revenues more than doubled, to $1.37 billion.

The growth has come despite the launch of Apple’s iPhone, which is the most-hyped device in the smartphone sector, but one hamstrung by a weighty price plan (British users will pay £900 for an 18-month contract), sluggish performance (expect to wait a couple of minutes to download an internet page) and resistance on the part of corporate buyers – many of whom have told workers not even to ask for an iPhone as part of their work package.

Meanwhile, the BlackBerry, once the preserve of high-flying lawyers and bankers, is making strides into the “prosumer” market.

The recently released BlackBerry Curve, for instance, was aimed at the hinterland territory where upwardly mobile types buy high-end devices, capable of sending and receiving e-mails, using their own – and not their employers’ – money.

Groups such as Symbian, which makes smartphone software and is owned by several mobile phone companies, including Nokia, the world’s largest, are following a similar path.

Symbian has focused on cutting prices for its sophisticated software (a license for a single phone can cost about $2.50) to broach the market for middle-range devices.

In a couple of years, the logic goes, nearly every phone will be “smart”.

Indeed, Apple’s rivals say that the massive amount of publicity garnered by the iPhone will work to their advantage by raising the profile of the smartphone sector as a whole.

They would say that, but they could have a point: Americans, in particular, have proved resistant to the charms of all-singing-and-dancing handsets.

By changing that mindset, the iPhone’s ripples could lift the fortunes of companies across the sector.

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