NTT DoCoMo has announced that their Nanimail application, which facilitates Japanese character recognition, will be compatible with the BlackBerry 8300, 8800, 8820, and 8830 on November 1st, with 8100 and 7100 software coming out December 1st. Oddly, this app was developed by DoCoMo’s American branch; you’d think that when it comes to writing Japanese, you’d want to keep operations at home. In any case, this character input software complements the Japanese language support update to the BlackBerry OS back in July, and should offer our buddies across the pond a full-bodied BlackBerry experience.
Tag: pacificPage 4 of 5
Japanese language support expands
2 Comments
After much confusion as to the availability of BlackBerry in China, we’ve finally got an official announcement that the BlackBerry 8700 is, in fact, landing there sometime this year. It’s been quite the struggle getting BlackBerry through the gates, but it’s finally going to happen. RIM’s stock took a huge jump at the news, hitting $125.62 at present after opening at $116.07. China’s running their own PT/Expo China Comm concurrent with CTIA, where the 8700 will be showcased and the good word spread.
Pantech has announced that they’ll be releasing the A1407PT in Japan come November, which conducts sound, both incoming and outgoing, through your skull. Crazy, huh? Conducting conversations this way supposedly cuts down on ambient distortion, and also provides clearer listening for folks with hearing disabilities. The bonephone is a niche-y technology, but innovative nonetheless. If a mobile just partially used the technology to clean up call quality, it would certainly see more widespread use.
A recent story went over some of the challenges RIM faces in the Chinese market, primarily China Unicom’s nefarious RedBerry. The article states that SIM cards and data plans are the only things available for BlackBerry, as previously reported. Despite this, we have it on good word that the 8700 and 7290 are, in fact, sold by China Mobile, but how well they’re doing against the significantly cheaper RedBerry remains to be seen.
“Chinese businessmen are not that international yet, so they are not as familiar yet with the Blackberry and prefer local gadgets,” said Rock Yang, principal handsets analyst at Beijing-based BDA. “Price will be the deciding factor in determining how the BlackBerry expands in China,” he added.
We just caught a story on BlackBerry’s poor penetration into China, even in light of the go-ahead given in July. Viable language support is still an issue, and a tough nut to crack for RIM. China Mobile is offering group plans for anyone who smuggles the devices in from Hong Kong or elsewhere, but they’re still unavailable for sale locally. There’s upwards of 600 million mobile users in China, and needless to say, RIM wants to get through the logistics so they can get in on the action.
Word has it that the Wi-Fi enabled BlackBerry 8820 is landing in Singapore thanks to M1, Singtel and Starhub. The keypad is decribed as “highly tactile”, which seems bizarrely necessary now that other nontactile keypads are emerging. We’re all pretty familiar with the 8820 by now (pretty much the BlackBerry 8800 plus Wi-Fi), so no need to dive into stats. No word on pricing yet.
