BlackBerry Goes to China
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Research In Motion has obtained the approvals to begin selling BlackBerry handsets in China.
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(InfoWorld) - BenQÂ will close a mobile phone research and development center in Beijing as it continues to slim operations. The company opted earlier this year toÂ stop investing in a German subsidiaryÂ due to rising losses. The Taiwanese company will shift work from the Beijing center to R&D labs in Suzhou, China, and Taiwan, BenQ said Monday. Closing the Beijing facility will help it reduce costs and work more efficiently, it said. Around 400 workers in Beijing will be affected by the closure, but some of them are expected to relocate to Suzhou. The closure shows BenQ is still trying to recover from its push to become a global handset player via BenQ Mobile, the mobile phone operation itÂ took over from SiemensÂ last year. The operation was such a burden to Siemens that it paid BenQ â¬250 million ($327.1 million) to take it over. It proved too difficult for BenQ to turn around, despite strong intellectual property and a solid brand name in Europe. The decision to step away from the business cost BenQ dearly, and the company still faces financial troubles from the move.Â BenQ lost NT$12.22 billionÂ (US$375.1 million) in the third quarter of this year, mainly due to inventory and impairment charges related to BenQ Mobile. It was BenQ's fourth straight quarterly loss. In all, the Taiwanese company reckons it lost over US$1 billion in its mobile phone operations over the past year. Analysts roundly blamed stiff competition in the mobile handset business for BenQ's troubles. NokiaÂ and MotorolaÂ have been taking market share away from most of their rivals in the handset business this year.
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There's a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Chinese cell-phone powerhouse.
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Squeezed at home, China&#39;s biggest computer maker, Lenovo, is buying IBM&#39;s money-losing PC business. But venturing abroad is fraught with risk.
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(InfoWorld) - China launched the first trials of a home-grown 4G (fourth-generation) mobile communications network in a district of Shanghai on Sunday, despite the fact it hasn't even decided on standards for 3G (third-generation) services, the Web site of the state-run China Daily reported. The field test in Shanghai's Changning District will cost about 150 million Chinese renminbi ($19.3 million) by the time it's completed and marks an important step for China. It will be the final trial of a system made in China and fulfills a goal ofÂ developing technology at homeÂ to meet the needs of Chinese users. The group of 10 Chinese institutions involved in the 4G project have obtained more than 200 patents for the system since starting research in 2001, and some of its fundamental technologies have been adopted by international standards organizations, the China Daily said, without naming the organizations. The goal has been to put the 4G system into trial commercial use between 2006 and 2010. The 4G system was designed to transmit data and images wirelessly at speeds as fast as landline optical fiber, the China Daily said. Research on the 4G system, called the FuTURE Project, short for Future Technology for Universal Radio Environment, was started as part of China's national high-tech initiative. China hasn't yet released aÂ timetable for the rollout of 3GÂ mobile networks, nor said how many licenses it will issue. Chinese officials have said they want 3G services up and running in time for the 2008 Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing. One issue surrounding the opening of 3G services in China has been the selection of the technology or technologies to be used. Many Chinese officials favor a home-grown standard, TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), but a TD-SDCMA rollout could prove slow because of a lack of support from equipment and handset manufacturers. Â
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Research In Motion RIM.TO said on   Monday it aims to offer a Japanese-language version of its   popular BlackBerry device in the first half of 2007.
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Blackberry maker RIM says it has shipped the first of its wireless, e-mail smartphones to China.
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China Mobile, the world's largest mobile phone operator, is on Wednesday expected to lend its support to LTE, the wireless broadband standard that looks set to become the flagship 4G technology.
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Research in Motion Ltd  said on  Thursday its business in China is developing as planned,  although the company has not yet started selling handsets  there.
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China Mobile Communications has, for now, broken off talks about serving as Apple's iPhone partner in launching the popular smart phone in China later this year.
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By de Jonquieres, Julian  CHINA Google and China Mobile are to cooperate on mobile search facilities as both continue their diversification of services in the mainland.
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Shares of BlackBerry maker Research in  Motion Ltd  jumped more than 6 percent to a  record $121.10 on Tuesday after the company announced it had  entered a deal to distribute its BlackBerry smartphones in  China with Alcatel-Lucent .
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China Mobile Communications, currently the largest operator of mobile communication services in China, will establish a 3G (third-generation) experimental network in Beijing at the beginning of next year, according to the China-based Xinhua Online.
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(InfoWorld) - Palm announced Wednesday that it would launch its Treo 680 handheld in China, and increase its presence in the Chinese market by opening a research and development (R&D) center there. The company said the smartphone will be sold in cooperation with CEC Telecom Science and Technology Co. , and distributed by Beijing Riverwill Communication Technology Co. The 680, designed to be a lower-cost alternative to other Treo models, runs the Palm operating system. It is a candybar-style quad-band GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phone that supports GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), which allow for mobile Internet access. PDAs have not yet made their mark in China, although they are growing in popularity, mostly thanks to aggressive pushes by manufacturers such as Lenovo Group, Dopod International, and Motorola, all of which have tailored their devices to the local market. One key design factor is recognition of handwritten Chinese characters. Palm said it is opening its first Asia R&D center in Shanghai for Asian language localization, to maintain better relations with its manufacturers in the region, and to accelerate time to market for its products in Asia. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Research In Motion (RIM) has no plans to set up network operations centers outside Canada, despite growing demand for BlackBerry in Asia and other markets. "Things are working really well right now. Having things centralized really improves the efficiency of the network," said Norm Lo, RIM's vice president of Asia-Pacific. Lo didn't rule out the possibility that RIM might set up a network operation center in Asia at some point to meet growing demand for the BlackBerry service in markets. "It's a possibility," he said. There are approximately 9 million BlackBerry users around the world. While RIM doesn't break user numbers down by specific region, the company estimates that 25 percent to 30 percent of users are located in countries outside North America. "And it's growing very fast," Lo said. RIM currently has two network operation centers, both in Canada, where the company's headquarters is. Every company that uses a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) links via the Internet to one of these two centers, which route e-mail to and from the company's servers. In April,Â RIM suffered an outageÂ in the U.S. and Canada that prevented users from receiving messages. The disruption started when one of the company's network operation centers apparently went down. BlackBerry users outside the U.S. were not affected by the outage. The BlackBerry service is widely available in Asia, including in China and India. There are only a handful of Asian countries, such as North Korea, Laos, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Vietnam, where the service is not yet available. Â
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Ericsson said Friday that it received contracts to build wireless communications networks in China and South Africa. China Telecom Corp.
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College parties met business e-mail on Wednesday as Facebook said it is adding its social-networking platform to Research In Motion Ltd.&#39;s BlackBerry devices.T-Mobile will be the first carrier to build a Facebook application into the BlackBerries it sells, but BlackBerry users on any network will be able to download the application starting later Wednesday, Facebook Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering Dustin Moskovitz said in a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless IT&#160;and Entertainment show in San Francisco.In the keynote, Moskovitz demonstrated taking a photo with a BlackBerry Curve device, adding tags to it and posting it to Facebook without even starting up the Facebook application. Other features include the ability to set special ringtones for Facebook events and invite friends to join Facebook through BlackBerry e-mail. But it&#39;s the open nature of Facebook&#39;s platform, which allows third parties to add new applications, that sets the company apart, Moskovitz said.The tie-up brings together the highest profile social-networking player, with almost 50 million active users, and an enterprise mobile pioneer vying for market share against Microsoft, Palm, Symbian, Apple, and other device and OS vendors. Executives of the two companies met at the CTIA Wireless Show in March in Orlando and agreed to work together, Moskovitz said. Openness is the key factor they had in common, he said.Starting from a base of thousands of colleges and high schools, Facebook last year opened its network to anyone, and members over 35 years old are the fastest-growing segment, Moskovitz said. RIM has its roots in corporate e-mail tied to specialized enterprise servers so the partnership could help Facebook grow right where it&#39;s catching up.The announcement came amid reports on Wednesday that&#160;Google and Microsoft are wooing Facebook.Facebook also announced a few other advances in the mobile arena, where it expects to have 4 million active users by the end of this month. There are Facebook services available on most major U.S. and Canadian carriers, and Moskovitz announced its first carrier deal outside North America, with O2 (U.K.) Ltd.One extension announced Wednesday lets users add information from third-party Facebook applications as a box in their mobile profiles. As an example, Moskovitz showed a user&#39;s profile that listed two causes he supports. Another extension lets organizations text-message Facebook members to send a text message in support of a cause. The member&#39;s support is immediately reflected on Facebook on the Web, he said.