Chinese Blackberry Customers' Long Wait for Personal Service

Although China Mobile is being officially supplied with Blackberry cell phones by TCL Communication Equipment, personal users in China will have to wait a year, maybe two, to enjoy the service.

Meng Biao, general manager of the China Business Center of Alcatel, TCL Communication Equipment, said the current business model for China’s Blackberry did not support common personal users, and China Mobile would not at present provide the service to them.

Blackberry sales volume will not be very big due to China Mobile’s market strategy. Industry insiders say China Mobile hopes to have more say in the mobile Internet industry in the future, and is unwilling to function merely as a channel. Any extensive cooperation between China Mobile and Blackberry still has a long way to come.

"In order to take advantage of Blackberry phones, companies need to have their own server," said Meng Biao. He said companies would be the major users of the service. After installation, they can receive, reply, forward and compose encrypted e-mails with a Blackberry phone at any time.

This operational model limits sales of Blackberry phones to high-end users.

TCL is the exclusive partner of China Mobile in this business. From the fourth quarter, 2007, to April, 2008, TCL supplied China Mobile with 9,000 Blackberry phones, 5,000 in 2008 alone.

China Mobile is now doing the numbers for the next shipment. China Mobile is in charge of the sales and promotion in the Chinese market, while TCL is in charge of the production and supply.

China’s developed cities in the Yangtze Delta, Pearl River Delta and the capital Beijing will be the key areas for the promotion of Blackberry phones, as they see frequent use among staff of foreign companies.

The upstream suppliers of the Blackberry and iPhone, both big in the global market, enjoy a very powerful position, and usually leave little bargaining room for local telecoms operators. Blackberry, however, must bargain with China Mobile because the Chinese market is really too big, and if they don’t cooperate with China Mobile, Blackberry phones won’t enter the Chinese market, at least any time soon.

But while China Mobile dominates China’s mobile telecoms market, it also felt it necessary to compromise because Blackberry service represents the future of mobile service and there is so far no alternative. According to China Mobile’s convention, it must add subscription services into the phone. Although the Blackberry phone sold in the Chinese market includes some of China Mobile’s services, it is not enough. 

With the iPhone, China Mobile will face problems of a different sort if it decides to introduce it, since it’s designed for personal users.