BlackBerry Now Available in China

RIM hit a coup by getting permission to sell its BlackBerry phones to the world’s largest consumer population. It took RIM 8 years to get in this position and they will start it off with the BlackBerry 8700g next month. The 8700g will have BlackBerry’s famed email capabilities, QWERTY keyboard and the connectivity of a quadband worldphone with GPRS and EDGE. It’s a high-end phone which would retail for around $700. There have been 5,000 pre-orders already for the device. The Chinese won’t make it easy for BlackBerry, however. Already a new push-email service similar to RIM’s but cheaper has been launched by China Unicom, second largest wireless operator in China. The service is called RedBerry. Via