Filed under: RIM, Misc

Though it should hardly come as a shock to readers familiar with our Keepin’ it real fake series, RIM might be surprised to find a bounty of BlackBerry-alikes as they enter the mainland Chinese market, undercutting a source of otherwise significant new revenue as millions of new folks discover the addictive devices for the first time. Though unlicensed knockoff manufacturers typically don’t fly in the US or Western Europe, Reuters points out that it can cost as little as $125K to bring one online in China — a compelling proposition in one of the world’s hottest mobile markets. What’s more, they’re finding that some Chinese are buying BlackBerrys strictly for their, uh, sound quality and good looks (can ya believe it?) but are bypassing China Mobile’s email hookup entirely, citing it as overpriced. Could the BlackBerry end up a boon for customers in the world’s most populous country, yet a bust for RIM?

[Thanks, David]

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Filed under: Handsets, Nokia, GSM, GPRS

Usually when companies do business with foreign countries it doesn’t make international headlines, but when you’re Nokia and you just did business with the world’s largest rising nation (China), you can bet that everyone will sit up and take notice. Nokia just announced that it’s inked two major deals with China Mobile and Chinese national mobile phone distributor PTAC for a combined total of €2 billion ($2.53 billion). According to the Agence France Presse, Nokia will sell “GSM / GPRS infrastructure” to China Mobile at a price of €580 million, and that company will also sell “mobile devices” to PTAC for €1.5 billion. Those kinds of figures not only draw attention from the media, but also from the leaders of those respective countries — indeed, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Finnish Prime Minister Matti Venhanen were in attendence. No word on whether Venhanen presented the Chinese leader with an iced-out Sidekick, though.

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Filed under: Handsets, Others, GSM, GPRS

There are slimmer phones on the market, sure, but the 7.7 millimeter, Asia-only Smart S100 has that poorly-faked-iPod look that Samsung simply doesn’t have anywhere in their product lineup. With the exception of the unfortunate dual-band 900 / 1800 GSM radio with nothing more than GPRS to feed it data, the phone’s specs aren’t half bad, with a 160 x 128 OLED display, 2-megapixel cam, and that Nokia 3650-style circular keypad we all love (or love to hate). Without even a single US-friendly GSM band, we think we’ve probably spent too much time on this thing already, but it’s fascinating to know that a no-name phone can beat virtually every major manufacturer in the slimphone game.

[Via Slashphone]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Linux, GSM, GPRS

Well hot damn, looks like Motorola went and sprung their smokin’, linux-based ROKR E6 upon China today. Better yet, we now know that this 14.5-mm thinster delivers the much appreciated GSM 900/1800 bands in addition to the 1900 band we saw tested and approved in the FCC filing. That makes it of limited use (but use nonetheless) here in the US as long as you stay within the T-Mobile network. The phone delivers a 2.4-inch, 260k color QVGA touch-screen with stylus, a 2 megapixel camera and push-to-talk capabilities in addition to handwriting recognition, a QR code (barcode) scanner, business card reader, and document viewer for PDF and the most common MS Office apps. And unlike the first gen ROKR, this pup drops iTunes in favor of RealPlayer which means support for MP3, MPEG4, AAC+, WAV, and RealAudio formats — fine and all, but most importantly, no artificial song cap — so load up that 2GB SD card to your heart’s content kid. Rounding things out on the audio front is the native 3.5-mm headphone jack and support for Bluetooth stereo audio (A2DP), integrated FM radio, dedicated music controls along the side, and a USB 2.0 jack up underneath for quick data transfer. When not lapping up the media you can talk for up to 7 hours or just sit and stare at the E6′s clean lines for about 235 hours on standby. Yours for 4,280 chinese yuan or $545 retail if you can track ‘er down.

[Thanks LordFarkward]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.