DoCoMo Brings Blackberry to Japan. Who Cares?
Editor’s note: WWJ’s newsletter is a bit different this week. We’ve included the teaser below with link to the new Wireless-Watch.Community colab. project website for the full article. It’s free access — you don’t even have to register!
Last Thursday, NTT DoCoMo announced they would deploy the super-popular BlackBerry email device, made by Canadian firm Research in Motion (RIM), in Japan, in autumn 2006. At first glance, the news is pretty interesting.
According to PR statements and various media reports, RIM’s corporate push email service will be available via DoCoMo to companies running Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, and Novell GroupWise email systems on their networks. In Japan, the BlackBerry terminals will run natively over DoCoMo’s W-CDMA “FOMA” network, and also will roam onto GSM/GPRS systems outside Japan.
One media report stated that “RIM stands to make potentially more money per customer with the DoCoMo deal by marketing its BlackBerrys in addition to its service.” Until recently, Japan lacked a decent, usable email device targeting corporate users.
Willcom has been offering Sharp’s super-cool Zero3, a Windows mobile OS device that has been flying off the shelves since the end of 2005, but it’s a consumer/prosumer device that is sold direct to the street and its POP/SMTP email capability doesn’t integrate (easily) into a corporate server.
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