RIM cleared to sell BlackBerrys in China

Step aside RedBerry, after 8 years of hemming and hawing the Chinese government has finally opened their doors to the original RIM BlackBerry. By the end of August, big city suits should find the BlackBerry 8700g on shelves with China Mobile -- the world's largest operator based on subscriber count -- offering up the service. iPhone, what iPhone? RIM now has open access to a population of more than 1 billion who like BlackBerrys based on, uh, their good looks alone.

[Mark Thwaite @ Jul 5th 2007 4:09AM]

So, China continues to open up. That's good. And lets hope all the new 'berry users can keep adding to the pressure to fully open access to the whole Web. Lets also hope this stops Western businesses backing the censorship of the Chinese authorities.

[ashmist @ Jul 5th 2007 4:37AM]

You can bet your ass the Chinese government has total access to all communications going though that network within China, and that all those certain subversive phrases and keyword will be watched for.

[Jamar @ Jul 5th 2007 8:09AM]

One phrase- under-the-table deal (works for my school here in Shanghai, at least).

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 5th 2007 6:51AM]

What, they aren't using copies already?

Wow.

[humpty @ Jul 5th 2007 7:31AM]

Crap.. their stock is gonna rocket.. should have bought in.

[Bill @ Jul 5th 2007 5:17PM]

Should be interesting to see a Blackberry with over 47,000 different keys for characters. How do you type an email in Chinese with English characters? China is a huge market, but not for the Blackberry.

[Jamar @ Jul 5th 2007 7:42PM]

We have this little system called "pinyin" for romanization of Chinese characters. Or, for HK, they use stroke-based input; one key for each type of pen stroke.