The Cellular industry is a very fast moving and highly aggressive market. While it is very profitable the devious tactics employed by wireless carriers and phone manufacturers keeps advancing towards the point of tipping a legal alarm. This latest bit of news is no different. Apparently AT&T is crippling some Blackberries to please Apple.

If you aren’t familiar with what AT&T has done to carry the iPhone then allow me to fill you in. Besides spending $50 Million on upgrading the EDGE network, supporting Visual Voicemail which is an iPhone only feature, forgoing a subsidized version and sharing monthly revenue there is no question AT&T would rather steer you towards an iPhone, after all if they put so much dedication and money into a phone it can’t go wrong right?

Unfortunately for Research In Motion, the creator of the Blackberry (or Crackberry if the coworker next to you gets a 300 page bill) may have a steep slope to cross if they want to continue offering unrestricted phones on AT&T.

Essentially the GPS function of the upcoming Blackberry 8820 will be crippled due to RIM being a direct competitor to Apple in the mobile handset market. The 8820 will instead have GPS support through the clunkier, less efficient Telenav system.

What is really interesting however is the fact that T-Mobile will be offering the same phone without any crippled features which sets itself ahead of the AT&T version. In addition RIM had supposedly contact AT&T over the issue and threatened to halt carrying any of their products should they rebel, RIM declined to take any action.

Via: MacNN