DoCoMo bringing BlackBerry to Japan
By Evan Blass 
posted Jun 8th 2006 12:14PM
posted Jun 8th 2006 12:14PM
Having already conquered the US and much of Europe, Canada's most famous contribution to consumer electronics is poised to take over yet another Asian market, when the ubiquitous BlackBerry hits phone-mad Japan this fall. Coming hot on the heels of KT Powertel's introduction of the 7100i in South Korea, wireless giant NTT DoCoMo has announced that it is partnering with BlackBerry-maker RIM to offer customers GSM / WCMDA "worldphone" versions of the addictive handhelds -- which is yet another step towards the carrier's commitment of having an all-GSM-enabled lineup within the next two years. Besides the traditional push email functionality that we've come to know and love, nothing much is known about the specifics of these upcoming foreign models, like how the pocket-sized BlackBerries will manage to pack in the thousands of keys necessary to represent all those Japanese glyphs.[Thanks, Gina]
Who Cares?
i Live in america not japan so what if they get blackberry i dont have stock in RIM and dont asians buy asian based companies???
Wow Korey, what the hell are you saying here? I'm guessing you're finding this article irrelavent. Wrong. Engadget mobile is ALL mobile news. So, this news is relavant. Besides, the implications of such a move is pretty big.
As for the 2nd part about: "dont asians buy asian based companies???" is a gross overgeneralization. The most popular phones in Japan in the mid 1990s was the AMPS Motorola Startacs and Microtacs
"...how the pocket-sized BlackBerries will manage to pack in the thousands of keys necessary to represent all those Japanese glyphs."
Japanese phones use the same keypads/keyboard layouts as us, they just have crazy-advanced predictive text.
It'll be interesting to see what style of Blackberry docomo ends up bringing to market...and how they price the service. If it looks good on both price and features, I'd consider trading in my current phone for one.
I wouldn't say Japanese-language predictive input is especially advanced; a lot of the time you are typing phonetically and converting to kanji as needed.
DoComo is initially bringing in the 8707--unsurprising given that it's the first Blackberry with 3G support--with some interface tweaks to handle Japanese language, though it may not support Japanese input. Some test units have been floating around recently but I haven't been able to get at one directly yet. I don't know if they are putting them on general sale, also; I suspect from reading the press release that it will be strictly bundled with the whole RIM server-side package and for corporate clients only.
You got to love technology,how sweet it is man...don't leave home without it....cheers.
"See You @ The Top"...Brent Mann ...gottohaveitnow...