Blackberry to tap regional language mart

[BESadmin]

Blackberry to tap regional language mart
25th March 2007

Blackberry, a leading brand in the personal digital assistant (PDA) market, will soon introduce its suite of enterprise applications in regional languages in India.

In its attempt to endear to the Indian converged device users, the PDA maker is hoping to further its reach in India with a colourful line of Blackberry Pearl and range of slim PDAs. Blackberry provides regional language support in Russia, Japan, Korea and will soon extend it to India too.

“We realise that small and medium business users would like to have Blackberry applications in local languages and we are working on it,” said Norm Lo, vice-president (APAC), Research in Motion (RIM), who manufacture Blackberry PDAs.

RIM, he disclosed, will be focused on its core wireless email market, despite slow growth rates and increasing challenges from competitors.

Lo added, “With Blackberry Pearl, we brought in few extra features like cameras and audio players but in our Blackberry 8800 and models hereon, company will dedicate its efforts in staying on top of the secure wireless email industry.”

Blackberry Pearl will also be launched in attractive colours such as white and red to combat the stylish line-up by Nokia.

“The Blackberry 8800 and the models that will be launched in near future will be available in colours other than black,” Lo said.

According to a Gartner report, in 2006, RIM accounted for 6.5 per cent of the combined and smartphone market PDA (trailing behind Nokia with almost 42 per cent), with shipments up 60 per cent year on year.

RIM smartphone shipments represent 36 per cent of all Blackberry mobile devices. Incidentally, Blackberry officials did not talk about the possibility of RIM, makers of Blackberry, partnering with Apple Computers, to create what has been dubbed by media as AppleBerry, a device combining the BlackBerry’s features with iTunes music software and potentially with camera and video capabilities and did not confirm whether any talks with Apple regarding a potential partnership had taken place.