India

RIM says it is unable to give India access to BlackBerry messages

Paul Mah — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:06:54 -0400

Research In Motion has finally told the Indian government the truth about its BlackBerry devices--that their design automatically precludes any interception of useful data. If you recall, the Indian government previously demanded that it be made privy to the content of encrypted data transmitted to BlackBerry smartphones. Enterprise customers using RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server employ a symmetric key design, of which nobody else has a copy.

RIM's willingness to continue "working on a solution" likely is due to the roughly 400,000 BlackBerry users in India. If the threatened shutdown is put into effect, the loss of these subscribers would significantly dent RIM's active base. In a statement, RIM pointed out that wireless encryption is increasingly being made mandatory for enterprise e-mail and is not unique to BlackBerry devices.

For more on the BlackBerry in India:
- check out this Electronista article

Apple gears up for its next leap with the iPhone

Dan Bowman — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:05:16 -0400

Apple says that its online shops in the U.S. and the U.K. are sold out of iPhones, a sure sign that it is preparing for the imminent launch of 3G variants by first clearing out old inventory. The new iPhone is expected to be announced and launched in June at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

If you recall, Apple previously announced its intention of selling 10 million phones by the end of 2008. It currently has achieved about 54 percent of this figure, or 5.4 million iPhones.

To help hit its stated target, Apple earlier announced a slew of software updates this summer to make the iPhone work more efficiently with the enterprise. In addition, it also aggressively inked deals with wireless carriers around the world. In fact, another four partners were announced this past Monday: SingTel in Singapore, Bharti Airtel in India, Globe Telecom in the Philippines and Optus in Australia.

For more on Apple's iPhone:
- check out this TechNewsWorld article

Vodafone snags iPhone for Europe, Asia

Mehan Jayasuriya — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:15:03 -0400

If you live in a country that isn't the U.S, the U.K., France, Austria or Germany, you've been waiting quite a while for the arrival of the iPhone. Luckily, Vodafone Europe has just announced that it won the contract to sell the device in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey, and will offer the phone "later this year." Hmm.

In related news, an internal AT&T document that leaked this week revealed that AT&T employees will be barred from taking vacation between June 15th and July 12th, due to "an exciting Summer Promotional Launch." As the iPhone die hards in the audience will note, AT&T pulled the same maneuver last year, barring vacations from June 15th to July 15th. So we can only assume that the 3G iPhone's launch will fall somewhere in that window. June 29th, anyone?

For more on the 3G iPhone:
- see this Vodafone press release
- and this Engadget article