[jackbl]

For Bro KT...........

The “BlackBerry race” heating up
============================================
VietNamNet Bridge – The fact that BlackBerry tries to conquer the Vietnamese market by joining hands with the three Vietnamese biggest network operators: Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone has created a race among the three big guys.

The path of BlackBerry entering Vietnam is not as rosy as other mobile phone manufacturers. Nguyen Viet Dung, Deputy Director of Viettel Telecom said that in 2005, BlackBerry began penetrating Vietnamese market through unofficial channels (unofficial imports). At that time, BlackBerry became the dream of hi-tech players.

In August 2008, Viettel began distributing BlackBerry, but it had to do this through Alcatel-Lucent. Only in September 2009, did Viettel begin launching push mail service into the market, the specific characteristic of BlackBerry.

Nowadays, with the rapid expansion of Apple, BlackBerry has to go more quickly to conquer the Vietnamese market by joining hands with Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone.

Especially, BlackBerry has introduced BlackBerry 9780 with the keyboard allow to type in Vietnamese, a move that shows its special attention to the Vietnamese market.

On August 2, Viettel announced new service packages for BlackBerry in Vietnam. The two BlackBerry service packages provided by Viettel to pre-paid subscribers include the package with full functions BB Mail which has the subscription fee of 100,000 dong a month, and the basic package BB Chat which has the subscription fee of 65,000 dong.

The BB Mail pre-paid package has been designed to the pre-paid clients with no associated data content, the number of free minutes of calls or SMS, therefore, it has the subscription fee lower than that of BB Mail post-paid package.

Meanwhile, BB Chat targets the clients who regularly use the functions of sending instant Yahoo messages, Gtalk, BlackBerry® Messenger, while they do not pay much attention to email receiving and sending.

The special thing of BB Mail and BB Chat for pre-paid subscribers is that users can register the service use per weekly or monthly to optimize their expenses: 30,000 dong per week for BB Mail, and 20,000 dong for BB Chat.

The two service packages provided by Viettel to post-paid subscribers are BB Web and BB Chat, who target the clients who still do not want to use all the available functions of BB Mail package. Using BB Web with the subscription fee of 150,000 dong per month, clients would be able to use 50 minutes of inner network conversations and 50 inner network SMS with 350MB data. When using BB Chat, clients have to pay the subscription fee of 65,000 dong a month.

“Viettel now has 10,000 clients using BlackBerry services. After joining hands with the manufacturer BlackBerry and lowering the service charges, we hope the services will become popular in Vietnam,” Dung said.

MobiFone has tested BIS package since July 13, at the fee of 21,000-133,000 dong. By July 28, a lot of subscribers registering the trial use of BIS received a message from MobiFone that the trial period has finished.

The move shows that MobiFone has completed its experiments to officially provide BlackBerry services to clients, possibly begin from August 2011.

VinaPhone is also testing BIS, but it has been applying only to special subscribers. The representative from the network operator said the service fee of the package is similar to that of MobiFone’s BIS. However, as the trial period is still running, he still cannot reveal the details about the charges and the ways of making registration.

According to telecom experts, the distribution of BlackBerry is the good way that helps network operators to attract VIP clients and sell high grade service packages. They say that big network operators will never miss the chance to show their strength, while users nowadays pay less attention to charges than the attention to the quality of services.

Dany Bolduc, Deputy President of RIM Vietnam affirmed at the ceremony on introducing the Vietnamese version for BlackBerry® Bold™ 9780 in Hanoi on July 21 that Vietnam is one of the strategic markets for RIM.

Buu Dien