Pirate ships and mutant ones aside, pearls are typically white: A truism T-Mobile USA branded this week with the launch of a white version of the popular BlackBerry Pearl handset. After Apple unveiled a black iPhone [1], it certainly makes sense that a carrier would launch a white, consumer-oriented smartphone. Dave Henderson from Waggener Estrom Worldwide claims that about 3 out of 4 T-Mobile subscribers who upgraded to a Blackberry Pearl, did so from a regular phone--not a converged device. Henderson also noted that 80 percent of T-Mobile Pearl users signed up for BlackBerry Internet service, but only to use it for web-based email accounts, instead of the more corporate BlackBerry enterprise service. Also, a reported 96 percent of T-Mobile Pearl customers send email from their device weekly.

For more on T-Mobile's white Pearl:
- read this post [2] from MobileTracker