Hutchison Whampoa launched the Blackberry wireless device in Hong Kong on Monday.
The Canadian-designed and made Blackberry is a monochrome device for mobile access to e-mail and personal information management functions. It is about the size of a Palm hand-held and has a built-in keyboard much like Handspring's Treo. But it has no backlighting and uses a WAP (wireless application protocol) browser. The Blackberry is being introduced in Hong Kong and China more than two years after its launch in North America.
Research in Motion (RIM) put Java in the Blackberry so Java software developers could write programs for it. The version of Java in a cell phone, called J2ME, also enables a user to download different software programs over the air. Jim Balsille, chairman of RIM said that it could be compared with hand-held devices such as Palm and the Pocket PC but rather with GPRS (general packet radio service), Java-enabled handsets.
'It's really like comparing sushi with potato chips with beer. I really can't think of any other product that has so many corporate implementations that offers this level of security,' RIM's chairman Mr Balsille said.
Hutchison Whampoa is offering the product at HK$5,480 for the device and HK$638 a month subscription for unlimited e-mail. Orange users can have the Blackberry for HK$3,980, at HK$580 a month, or HK$1,880 for HK$788 a month.
Hutchison Telecom's chief executive Agnes Nardi said the offering had received solid response from corporate customers.