HONG KONG, Aug 11 (Reuters) - It was only a matter of time: China is catching Blackberry fever. And like most other things in that burgeoning economy, it’s likely to be at cut-rate prices.
John Hsu, a reporter in China’s commercial capital of Shanghai, got in ahead of the September launch. He bought his Blackberry online for just $65 — roughly a fifth of its retail price in the United States.
He uses it like a regular phone because it looks cool and he thinks its sound quality is better than an average smart phone. Still, he has no plans to subscribe to a Blackberry e-mail service provided by China Mobile, which can cost as much as 598 yuan ($75) a month. “I would like to get work e-mails on my Blackberry, but the price has to be right,” said Hsu, who now pays 20 yuan ($2.50) a month to get personal e-mails on his Hewlett Packard (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) PDA phone. If Hsu is representative of price-sensitive Chinese retail customers, the most debilitating and lingering effects of Blackberry fever may be felt by the device’s maker, Research in Motion (RIMM.O: Quote, Profile, Research), and service providers such as China Mobile Ltd. (0941.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) (CHL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) The problem is a familiar one: cheap knock-offs. And that’s not all. While used phones have come calling on the world’s largest telecommunications market and are cannibalizing business from foreign and local phone manufacturers alike, generic handsets made by unlicensed factories pose an even bigger challenge. “In China, there is always undercutting in the market,” said John Ure, who directs a telecommunications research project at the University of Hong Kong. “It is virtually impossible to police.” |
