Posts Tagged ‘Retail Outlets’

Everything you ever wanted to know about BlackBerry in China

December 7th, 2009 BBerryNews

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First of all, I’d like to introduce the mobile operators in China. As you may know, there are now three mobile operators in mainland China. The biggest is China Mobile, which owns TD-SCDMA found in UMTS networks in China. China Unicom is another, and it owns WCDMA and has recently launched the iPhone. The third is China telecom which owns CDMA2000.

BlackBerry is just beginning to become popular in China but there are still some major barriers. Many of my friends use a BlackBerry, but RIM has not established any retail outlets or simple means to buy their devices. Most of us get our Blackberry phones as smuggled goods or from friends abroad. China Mobile now offers BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) with the Blackberry 8700, but it comes at a very high price, about 398 RMB- 598 RMB/month ($60 to $85 USD). This is all going to change very soon. The latest news is that China Telecom have announced BIS support, and they are going to be shipping the BlackBerry Storm and Tour in the near future. China Mobile are also rumored to be releasing the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and Bold2 (not sure) soon. We have also heard from an official at China Unicom, who has confirmed they are in talks with RIM, so we will hopefully see some BlackBerry devices from them as well. Overall, China is going to see a big surge in devices around all of mainland China.

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RIM have done a great job of being active in the developer and mobile community here in China. BlackBerry is present at almost every major event, and they have even attended one of the largest telecom industry events in China, P&T/EXPO COMM, for the past 4 years. This year, my company MMMOOO, was honored to join RIM at the event, where I took the photos you see in this post, as well as on my Flickr account. We are an official partner of BlackBerry China, and we expect it to be a long and fruitful relationship.

The apps that are going to be really popular in China are games, IM clients and utilities. There is a fairly serious pirating problem in China, so one might expect free apps to be more successful in this environment. Chinese consumers are gradually paying more for apps and just like in North America, this is going to have a positive impact for the developer community. My friends use mostly Gmail, Google Maps and QQ (a popular IM client in China). The big problem is that this is all the Chinese have access to. There is no Chinese version of Mobihand, nor is App World available.

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Selling BlackBerry devices in China is not going to be a trivial matter. The BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard is very compatible with Chinese characters, and is a better typing experience than a 0-9 keypad. The input method does need some work though. I know that RIM are still developing a better input method for Chinese characters, and this will be an important hurdle for them to jump before BlackBerry can be a success in China.

I think the most important thing for RIM’s success in China is to be officially launched by all three operators. Right now, it’s far too difficult and expensive to get a BlackBerry and these official channels will make it much easier for the Chinese to become BlackBerry users. Here in China, we have all heard about BlackBerry. The news about the American President, Barack Obama, using a BlackBerry actually did a lot for spreading awareness of the device. Now we just need a way to purchase one.

There are also a lot of BlackBerry blogs in China such as BerryCN, Berrytime and Berrymail. These are very popular for Chinese BlackBerry fans, just like BlackBerry Cool and CrackBerry are for Europe and America.

Personally, I think BlackBerry has everything we need in terms of hardware. All it needs now is a better input method and more applications.

If there is anything else you’d like to know about BlackBerry in China, leave a comment!

ED NOTE: For more about BlackBerry around the world, see the following articles:

What it’s like owning a BlackBerry in Nigeria by Temitope Smolaso Olufoye
BlackBerry in Nigeria part 2 – productivity, iPhone and bandwidth
The BlackBerry Bold in Japan – a user survey

© Owen Wong for BlackBerry Cool, 2009



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Looks Like The BlackBerry Curve 8520 Is Just About Ready To Launch On Rogers

September 21st, 2009 BBerryNews

Rogers BlackBerry Curve 8520

When carrier promotional materials start showing up for upcoming BlackBerry devices it is usually a telltale sign that the launch of the device is just around the corner.  That being said, promotional materials for the Rogers BlackBerry Curve 8520 have started to show up in Rogers retail outlets.

[Via BlackBerry Cool]

Looks Like The BlackBerry Curve 8520 Is Just About Ready To Launch On Rogers is a post from: RIMarkable



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RIM executive talks about the BlackBerry Curve 8520 in India

August 28th, 2009 BBerryNews

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Earlier this month, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 launched in India on a prepaid model. According to RIM executive Frenny Bawa, the 8520 “was designed with India in mind. It’s the lowest price BlackBerry we have ever launched and [with social networking trends in mind], it is loaded with dedicated multimedia keys and a trackpad.”

As RIM continues to grow in developing markets with great potential such as Latin America, countries such as India are key to a global strategy. According to Bawa, “India adds an average of 10 million new mobile phone subscribers a month. This is significant and, of course, RIM wants to participate in this growth.”

BlackBerry devices are selling well in India and the market could prove as a testing bed for successful sales strategies in a developing market. In the past year, RIM has increased its partners in India to 8, and tripled staff.

“One of the most significant changes is that we have tweaked our strategy to better suit the way the Indian consumer buys a smartphone,” said Bawa. RIM has partnered with Reddington India, a national distributor, to put BlackBerry devices into retail outlets across nine Indian cities instead of making them available only via carriers.

“Since then, the availability of BlackBerrys in India has mushroomed significantly,” said Bawa. “It was very obvious that we didn’t have the right distribution strategy. When we entered the Indian market [about five years ago], we were exporting the North American business model, which focused more on corporate users. Today, however, 45 per cent of our global users are consumers.”

It should be interesting to see what sort of strategies are needed to sell devices in Latin America and Africa. While prepaid is a major driving force behind sales, the price point is key as well. Perhaps we’ll see a resurgence of older models in the developing world.

[Via]

© Kyle for BlackBerry Cool, 2009



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