Saudi Arabia beats UAE to the punch, BlackBerry service to be ceased by Friday
By Ross Miller 
posted August 4th 2010 12:28AM
posted August 4th 2010 12:28AM
posted August 4th 2010 12:28AM
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Lata BB! Sick burn!
@NitOxYs is there any freedom left anywhere in the world? Since Bush things seem to have gone downhill from there. Even Obama is one of them. Can't believe this.
@AndroidFanBoy To be fair, Saudi Arabia never had many personal freedoms.
@AndroidFanBoy
Bush really did ruin it for all of us.
@NitOxYs Dare I say, they got Torched?
@beesneazy
Not really... he only did what his "masters" ordered him to do...
@NitOxYs
Well, that's the end of the BlackBerry. The company was already on the rocks with the share price dropping daily. The announcement of the Torch didn't help at all. It used to be automatically everytime RIM made an announcement for a new device like that, the shares would just soar. Now they just go down. RIM used to be hot, now it's cold as ice.
@MosesusedaniPad I know a few investor guys, they're all betting against RIM right now, especially when they see Android coming up on iPhone at lightspeed, not to mention the most activations for any platform in Q2.
@dissonance89 Which kinda goes hand in hand with their new slogan they've been think about: Saudi Arabia: Protecting You, Protecting Us, But Mostly Us.
@MosesusedaniPad
The news sites have been trying for 3 years to make their own simplistic prophecy come true. Their dumbed down narrative: oh no! here comes Apple! RIM is in trouble. Seriously - its been 3 years of GROWTH since the end was predicted!
But some perspective: while RIM % of the smartphone market dropped, it has not dropped as fast as the over all smartphone market has increased.
Put another way: RIM actually sold more units this year than last year AND has higher profit this year over last year (last Q was US$768.9 million with a profit of $643 million a year ago) AND revenue has increased about the same. This isn't to say everything is rosy - but it is to say that i don't trust the 'industry news' analysis when Rims demise at the hands of Apple is a story that EVERYBODY wants to see come true to validate the lazy analysis from 3 years ago when the iPhone launched. But year over year since that time RIM sells more units than the year before and profits go up. Hmmm.
My point? Yeah MosesusedaniPad - its all over for RIM now that Saudi Arabia - representing less than 1% of the worlds smartphone sales - have banned them. Thats it! nail in the coffin! Doesn't matter that there is virtually no smartphones platform as 'sticky' in the enterprise as RIM or that they are doing more than $4 billion per quarter in revenue, or that high schoolers everywhere like BBM (for some reason...) or that they have just given their customers a proper browser (finally). Nope - the end is near!
Hmmm - i think i just convinced myself to buy RIM shares at there 'depressed' price.
@MosesusedaniPad
Oh how wrong can you be?
This ban proves beyond doubt that the Blackberry is, by far, the most secure mobile device out there. My guess is that this episide will be relatively short lived and pressure will be brought upoin the various loony factions within these govenrments to see sense.
This will, without doubt, improve BlackBerry sales in many other markets because companies want high security and this is now an easy and provable sell.
Now, as ever, BlackBerry, the new 8900 and the incrediblke BlackBerry 6 (OS6) is THE HOTNESS.
@dissonance89
Never had any personal freedoms????
Personal freedoms????
Personal freedoms????
You do realize they're not asking anything more than what the US, Canada and the UK have been doing for the past decade, right? Right?
Engadget should have mentioned that in their post, but turns out they're no better than FOXnews.
@TareG
Please enlighten us. Where did you get this info about the US and UK, etc?
RIM says they themselves are unable to decrypt user data, so how are they allowing anyone else to do it?
@grobbo
They are simply asking what the US, Canadian, and British governments have requested and were granted by RIM, the ability to ensure that the country's national security isn't compromised due to the fact that governments aren't able to access the data on the network. Americans live in a country where anything and everything they create online is traceable by the government purely for national security interest. What the UAE and Saudi's are doing is putting the pressure on RIM to cooperate, otherwise the governments will suspend these services until a solution is presented to them by RIM to patch up the loopholes.
@TareG Well, women are not supposed to drive in the Kingdom. In fact, they can't even speak up in business meetings in a room full of men. If Blackberry bends over to please their fucked-up religious views, then we're all in trouble...
@AndroidFanBoy
And we care about what Saudi Arabia does how?
Let me go backwards for all we care. If it wasnt for the damn oil needs, they would still be living in shakles and caves...
@Spongecake
Oh my God, women shouldn't drive and can't talk? Looks like I went to a different Saudi Arabia were most of the doctors at the hospital were women, 70% wore their hair uncovered, and worked nightshifts more than your average North American female resident.
Seriously, keep watching FOXnews.
@TareG Did I say women couldn't be doctors? I said women could not drive, which is a fact, although the Kingdom was considering lifting the ban a few months ago. As well, my company at the time could not send women to business meetings due to reluctance of the men to address them in meetings.
And you got your numbers mixed up: 70% of university graduates are women,but only 5-15% of women make up the workforce, due to gender discrimination.
You call that freedom?
@Spongecake
Gender discrimination? No buddy. Not at our hospital, and definitely not in medicine.
Women choose to stay home because their husbands are filthy rich, it's just pointless to go to work everyday when you can stay home with your children.
R.I.P, Black Berry in few years.
Oil execs can't use their blackberries anymore!
BB better has some revolution design, the resolution and is a joke.
@techlord Their hardware design is excellent in terms of usability; and the screen resolution is more than adequate, especially for that screen size.
@SlimSpaceman No he's right, the screen size is a joke for anything other than scrolling through lists of emails and BBM's.
Did they just lose 5 customers?
If the BB is so secure, maybe I want to look into buying one. Seems like a good problem to have.
@FitFan actually they'll lose 700,000 customer which is 1.5% of all BB users (50 mil.)
@3li Right because big round numbers are always accurate.
@FitFan
Don't forget people who travel there for work.
They could decide to change phones too.
@FitFan
BBs are so secure, they allow all your data to pass by the US, Canadian and British governments while you're in those countries, for the past 10 years, which is what SA and UAE are asking for right now.
@3li
Actually it's 400,000 in India, so I'm guessing a hell of a lot less in SA.
WAIT! Saudi's have Blackberries? I thought that 80's tech just became available over there.
@jordanbiffle
the problem that it's expensive, more than some Android devices.
We citizens suffer from high prices in Saudi Arabia as well as other countries. the iPhone 4G will be worth more than $800 sold by Mobily Telecom.
@jordanbiffle Yea, they just got the original Motorola Startac.
@jordanbiffle
Saudi Arabia is more advance than the US in phone techs
it got Video Calling ,Mobile TV ,Credit Transfer and all the 3.5G services long long time ago
@jordanbiffle
I installed 3G there, before it was in the drawing boards here in US
@sajd4000 Even if they gave away gold bars with every subscription, Saudi Arabia would still be an horrible shithole. Who cars what sort of networks they have? Anyhow, tents pose no barriers to radio signals, and the whole place is flat, so I'm sure it's one of the easier places to deploy a network.
Might as well cease the use of the Internet there. BBM isn't the ONLY secure form of messaging I'm sure :\
@ChanceMan
Skype-to-Skype calls are pretty good from an encryption standpoint. Other than that I suppose one could always port Tor and Privoxy to the more open smartphone platforms.
Or just download and install on something like MeeGo perhaps.
My guess is that multinational corperations will resist giving any goverment access to it's secure email (especially when most of those emails are about cooking the books and dodging taxes) and will start issuing ultimatums of their own.
Thats too bad.... Blackberry we hardly knew ye...
Best BB ad campaign yet, am I right?
I might expect this from hardcore Saudi Arabia, but why must the UAE try this as well? Of all the countries in the region, the UAE (and particularly Dubai) seem to be the most pro-Western. If even they are this against privacy, it speaks volumes about the mentality of the other governments in the region.
@Dante of the Inferno
It's all about money. Who doesn't want to eavesdrop on stock tips and business transactions?
@pika2000
That's a possibility, but it's not like either Abu Dhabi (UAE head state) or Saudi Arabia are hurting for money. Unlike the nations of the West, both governments have a SURPLUS.
@Dante of the Inferno
You can never have "enough" money. The ones that are more interested in gaining more are more likely to be the ones that already have the most. Greed. It's human nature. Even if you have a surplus, who doens't want to gain more power/control and stock tips on the side?
@Dante of the Inferno the most pro-western "Dubai" was spying their citizens using blackberry by a software batch installed illegally in the devices,
anyway, it's a ministry of interior requests in both countries that was rejected by RIM for a privacy concern,
however, the same company (RIM) accepted a similar request from other countries I'm not naming
@Dante of the Inferno
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/14/blackberry-update-in-uae-reportedly-surveillance-software-in-dis/
check this out,,,,
@Dante of the Inferno
Kind of a bigoted statement. UAE and SA are seeking the same access to data as what’s afforded the USA and Canada, simple as that, and their request hasn’t been granted. And, it’s not all BB data being blocked, but that’s just being glossed over by most journalists...
@Dante of the Inferno: UAE and Dubai pro-western? As in like you kiss your wife at the beach and get thrown in jail? That Dubai? Back to the drawing board, off ya go.
@MisterWarmth
Most pro-Western of the region, yes. Just be thankful you can take your wife to the beach at all in the Middle East.
I don't buy the how greed angle Pika is pitching. In this scenario, the governments are literally going out of their way to try to play stocks. They already nationalize their respective energy markets (which are still their most profitable businesses), so what need to they have to spy on other stocks?
As for the previous Engadget article (posted nearly 55 weeks ago to the day), I could maybe MAYBE see why the UAE would take these measures as a security precaution in light of US practices, but I still say that the invasion of privacy is bad news, especially for the region in question.