Fact of the matter is, RIM’s not in a good position right now. Its stock price have seen better days, it’s trying hard to shake the “corporate use” image off its BlackBerry brand and at the same time the company has yet to find a way to effectively stop losing market share in the US and Europe. Despite Thorsten Heins (RIM’s new CEO) telling you otherwise, the Canadian tech company is struggling.

If this latest marketing effort is anything to go by, it looks like RIM is desperate as well.

GoGo Girl, Justin Steele, Trudy Foreal and Max Stone, these are the four characters that RIM has recently created as part of its “Be Bold” marketing campaign that took off at the start of the New Year. The story goes, on New Year’s Eve, RIM asked its Twitter followers to describe how they will be bold in 2012. The characters were created based on over 35,000 responses.

We don’t know about you but we don’t think these four fictional characters are going convince anyone to buy a BlackBerry.

To be fair, RIM is currently without a CMO. Heins is looking to find one soon but that still doesn’t excuse the company from launching this – in our opinion – silly marketing stunt.

Enough with the advertising and marketing RIM. Let’s focus on speeding up on the launches of your BB10 devices shall, and make them awesome please.

Head on over to after the jump to get to know these characters a little better.

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	Ad-nalysis, BlackBerry, Mobile Devices
	Be Bold, blackberry, GoGo Girl, infographic, Justin Steele, Max Stone, rim, Trudy Foreal

For this coming Chinese New Year, Maxis is doing a buy 1 and get another 50% off promo on BlackBerry. However it is limited to the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and you have a choice between a Curve 9300 and a Curve 8520 for discounted purchase.

To entitle for this promo, you would need to get the Bold 9900 bundled with 24 months. The Bold 9900 goes for RM1,630 on BIS 55 which comes with 500MB (with free 500MB extra) and RM1,390 on BIS 90 which comes with 3GB of data. Then you have a choice to get a Curve 9300 at RM434 or the Curve 8520 at RM299. From the site, it appears that the additional device is contract free with no additional subscription required.

For more information, head over to Maxis BlackBerry Page.

	BlackBerry, Blackberry OS, Maxis, Mobile Devices, Mobile OS, Players on the Field
	blackberry, BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9900 Malaysia, BlackBerry Bold 9900 Maxis, BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Curve 8520, BlackBerry Curve 9300, blackberry curve 9300 malaysia, Chinese New Year 2012, Maxis, rim

Just like the previous combo offer, Maxis now has extended the offer which bundles the Playbook with newer models. This time around you can get a BlackBerry Bold 9790 or Torch 9800 with the Playbook 16GB version for only RM1,288. This is tied with 24 months contract of BIS Advance.

If you’re interested, you gotta act fast as it is limited to first 1,500 customers only.

For more information, head over to Maxis FB Page.

FAQ on the offer after the break.

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	BlackBerry, Maxis, Mobile Devices
	blackberry, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Malaysia, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Maxis, BlackBerry Playbook, BlackBerry Playbook Malaysia, BlackBerry PlayBook Malaysia discount, BlackBerry PlayBook Malaysia price, BlackBerry PlayBook Malaysia promotion, BlackBerry PlayBook Malaysia sale, BlackBerry PlayBook price Malaysia, BlackBerry Torch 9810, BlackBerry Torch 9810 Malaysia, Maxis, rim

If you’re still looking for more contract options for the BlackBerry Bold 9790, Celcom today has revealed its bundling plans as well. This makes Celcom the 3rd telco to offer after U Mobile and Maxis.

For personal application, the Bold 9790 which is sold at RM1,488 outright goes for as low as RM1,088 on 12 months contract with Celcom Exec 50 and 5GB BlackBerry Pro plan. There are other smaller options of 300MB, 1GB and 3GB data plan for bundling. In terms of contract duration, you are limited to only 12 months.

For business users, it is is offered as low as RM888 on Package 188 with 24 months duration. Business users can choose between 12 and 24 months which obviously gives more subsidy for the device.

For more information, head over to Celcom’s BB page.

	BlackBerry, Celcom, Mobile Devices, Players on the Field
	BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Celcom, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Malaysia, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Price, Celcom, rim

UPDATE: U Mobile BlackBerry Bold 9790 plans are officially revealed. Full plan details below after the jump.

U Mobile is expected to offer the BlackBerry Bold 9790 on 5th December but they have started silent pre-ordering deal on selected people.

The BlackBerry Bold 9790 is said to be offered as low as RM799 with 24 months contract plan of U88. For BIS service, additional RM20 subscription fee is required which makes it a total of RM108 for 24 months. There’s also an upfront payment of RM264 upon registration. In total, that’s RM1063 to be paid upon subscription and it is payable via credit card’s 0% interest easy payment installment.

Thanks SirProtos for the heads up!

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	BlackBerry, Blackberry OS, Mobile Devices, Players on the Field, U Mobile
	BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Malaysia, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Price, BlackBerry Bold 9790 U Mobile, rim, U Mobile

AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana

Indonesians would break out into riots for almost any reason it seems. Previously it was because they couldn’t get tickets for the epic SEA Games football finals between our Harimau Malaya and the Garudas, now it’s because of a smartphone — specifically the Blackberry Bold 9790.

Over 3,000 BlackBerry crazed Indonesians turned-up at a special event at the Pacific Place shopping mall in Jakarta where the Bold 9790 will be sold. To make certain people came in droves, BlackBerry decided to throw in a 50% discount to the first 1000 devices sold. To up the desirability factor even further, RIM made Indonesia the first country in the world where it will sell the BlackBerry Bold 9790.

Naturally for these sort of things, people were already standing in line from the day before and the number of people had grown to well over a thousand people by the time the event was about to kick off. Things were already very tense but the tipping point happened when rumours started going around that the Bold 9790 had already sold out even before sale started. This infuriated the restless crowd which by now have grown to over 3,000 people.

In desperation the frustrated crowd started to breakdown barriers erected at the event venue to get their hands on the Bold 9790. Fearing a riot, the organisers called in the riot police. Hundreds were deployed to control the situation. The massive crowd also caused a major traffic congestion in a city where traffic is already very bad on a normal day.

While the polisi managed to stop a riot from breaking out, quite a number of people where injured in the incident, some even lost consciousness on the scene due to overcrowding. Eventually, the event had to be closed prematurely for the people’s own safety.

Them Indonesians really love their BlackBerrys don’t they.

Watch the pandemonium on video after the jump.

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	BlackBerry, Mobile Devices
	blackberry, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Indonesia, indonesia, rim

UPDATE: Expected pricing for the Bold 9790 revealed here.

UPDATE: IMCC reveals Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus Pricing at RM1,699.

U Mobile has started registration of interest for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Samsung Galaxy W and the BlackBerry Bold 9790. According to the details the registration of interest will run until 1st December and those that registered will be informed about their collection after 5th December.

Plans and pricing are not revealed yet but it is likely to be bundled on their new postpaid plans. Recently U Mobile has been aggressive in the device game with the latest gadgets offering. In fact, they are more active than Maxis which has been very quiet lately in terms of smart phone bundling.

For the BlackBerry Bold 9790, U Mobile is throwing FREE BlackBerry car charger, leather pocket and Jabra bluetooth headset worth over RM250 for the first 100 subscribers.

Head over to U Mobile to register your interest for the Tab 7.0 Plus or Bold 9790. It is strange that they need to offer a registration of interest for Galaxy W which is already available through IMCC.

Thanks tessiemah for alerting us at the comments!

BlackBerry, Mobile Devices, Players on the Field, Samsung, U Mobile

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RIM today announced two new phones in its BlackBerry line-up — the Bold 9790 and the Curve 9380. Both devices run RIM’s latest BlackBerry 7 operating system.

BlackBerry Bold 9790
The BlackBerry Bold 9790 slots just below the Bold 9900 flagship, it features a 1GHz single-core processor with 768MB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage (versus the Bold 9900 1.2Ghz processor with 768RAM and 8GB on board storage). You also get a micro SD card slot that support cards up to 32GB.

Other than that, the Bold 9790 features a smaller 2.45-inch capacitive touch screen compared to the 2.8-inch capacitive screen on the Bold 9900. The Bold 9790 has a lower resolution display as well, pushing 480×360 pixels with 246dpi versus the 640×480 screen on the Bold 9900 that pushes out 286dpi. Another notable difference is the camera. Both devices feature a 5MP camera but the Bold 9790 shoots videos in VGA resolution (640×480) while the Bold 9900 shoots 720p videos.

BlackBerry Curve 9380
The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first touchscreen device in the Curve family. It features a 3.2-inch 480×360 display, a single-core 800Mhz processor and a 5MP camera that shoots 720p videos, and that’s pretty much it.

No details on pricing has been announced, RIM says the Bold 9790 and the Curve 9380 will enter markets around the world in the coming weeks. You can expect local operators to offer plans for the devices when they arrive in Malaysia. We have a strong feeling that the Curve 9380 is coming to U Mobile when it hits Malaysia but this is yet to be confirmed.

	BlackBerry, Mobile Devices
	blackberry, BlackBerry 9790 Malaysia, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9380, BlackBerry Curve 9380 Malaysia, rim

BlackBerry has a lot of catching up to do in order to stay relevant. To stay in the game, an upcoming device called the BlackBerry London is in the works and said to be running on the upcoming BBX OS.

Rumour suggests that the BlackBerry London runs on a TI OMAP dual-core 1.5GHz processor with 1GB of RAM and comes with 16GB of storage. There’s a 8MP at the back and a front facing 2MP for video calls. That’s well spec’ed like the rest of todays offering. In terms of design, the London looks similar to the recently launched premium BlackBerry Porsche design device.

According to the source, the BlackBerry London is thinner than the iPhone 4 and it is roughly the same size as a Samsung Galaxy S II. Because of its boxy design, the device is said to able to stand on its sides without toppling over.

There’s no official details yet but an update from BGR indicates that it will be released sometime in Q3 2012. That’s one year from now and the hardware specification would probably be mainstream or obsolete by then. Come on RIM, you could do better.

[ SOURCE, VIA ]

	BlackBerry, Mobile Devices, Rumour Mill
	blackberry, BlackBerry BBX, BlackBerry London, QNX, rim

A massive service outage spanning over three days, an appalling financial outlook, lackluster sales of its recently released Bold 9900 and now this. Boy, things are getting from bad to worse for RIM and Blackberry.

Data from comScore’s Mobilens survey reveals that RIM lost 1.8 million user in the US in the third quarter of this year. Even more damaging, the fall comes after RIM loss 1 million subscribers in the second quarter. In contrast, Google’s Android user base grew 7.78 million subscribers and Apple grew 3.19 million users in the same period.

Overall, RIM is the only manufacturer that is seeing its market share rapidly dwindling while Google emerged as the clear leader in US smartphone growth followed by Apple. Microsoft and even Symbian are also seeing growth — albeit at a slower pace — in the same quarter.

The figures will be seriously disappointing for RIM, which has built up a huge inventory of BlackBerry 7 phones and PlayBook tablets. This explains the global trend of reducing prices and bundling BlackBerry devices together to get as much BlackBerry units off store as quickly as possible.

BlackBerry users, what are your thoughts? Are you still with BlackBerry or have you shifted to Android or iPhone?

Table showing how the brands stack up after the jump.

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	BlackBerry, Mobile Devices
	blackberry, rim, subscribers, users