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Blackberry still gives its loyal users a thrill.

TORONTO • They call them the BlackBerry loyals: longtime smartphone users who have clung to their aging Curve and Bold models through the most turbulent days of the company.

In the coming months, Research In Motion Ltd. is certainly going to need them.

Despite what some critics suggest, there are still plenty of smartphone users around the world who sport BlackBerrys. In fact, there’s about 80 million of them according to RIM’s most recent quarterly subscriber numbers.

Among them are millions of enterprise c ustomers, mostly employees at government, corporate and private businesses who were handed a BlackBerry by their employer.

Together, they were the BlackBerry users who helped the device become a symbol of mobile communications innovation, and kept the company relatively stable as its share of the consumer market tumbled in North America and Europe.

It’s a factor that RIM hasn’t ignored in preparation for the unveiling of its new smartphones on Wednesday, though the battle to keep enterprise customers won’t be easy.

Competition for the highly lucrative corporate smartphone market has heated up, and while RIM has maintained a stronghold on it for years, other smartphone companies are seeing an opportunity.

Last week, an investment wing of Samsung Group — the leading Android smartphone maker — announced a “strategic investment” in Toronto-based Fixmo Inc., a software maker that specializes in data and device security.

Apple Inc. executives also made a point of emphasizing the popularity of their iPad tablet with major banks and government agencies. The iPhone has also gained traction in the enterprise market, they said on the company’s earnings call last week.

The new BlackBerrys will arrive in stores first with a touchscreen device expected sometime over the next six weeks. RIM will then release an updated physical keypad design a few weeks later. The official dates will be announced on Wednesday.

The staggered launch has been a sticking point for some analysts who are concerned about those loyal fans who stuck it out for the keypad version. Many of the users who would prefer touchscreen have already switched to a competitor, they suggest.