A BlackBerry Guide for Hong Kong

Like mentioned some days ago the BlackBerryInsight team was checking out Hong Kong and its BlackBerry compatiblity.

Short introduction: For 10 years Hong Kong belongs to China again. Therefor, there are a lot of advantages in that area. It is a so called “special administrative region” of the People’s Republic of China with a population of about 7 mio. people. The market is completely encapsulated and nearly the most (financially) liberal place on earth. Hong Kong’s economic power is mostly built on import/export and financial businesses.

Anyway, RIM is also in Hong Kong for several years now and their Hong Kong branch is called “Research In Motion (Hong Kong) Limited”. This is the Asian headquarter of RIM which is responsible for all of RIM’s actions in Asia (including Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Japan, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand - just for mentioning some of them). If you are looking for a job at RIM in that area feel free to check out their job offerings. As Hong Kong itself is a “free trade area” the government does not levy duty on imports.

Nearly half of the world’s population is living in Asia and therefor RIM needs to be present here as well. Hong Kong itself seems to be quite small compared to countries like China or India but it is the best place for business. You can also see that at the diversity of network carriers that are offering BlackBerry devices and services. Such a “small” city like Hong Kong provides a variety of possiblities to get a BlackBerry. Providers like Hong Kong CSL, Smartone Vodafone or Hutchison are very famous in HK. They all offer similar packages for the BlackBerry service which are about HK$ 500 per month. All recent devices are available at those carriers as well including the BlackBerry Pearl, BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry 8800. Those carrier shops and advertisments are very easy to find, placed everywhere in the city: at buildings, on taxis, in newspapers, in subways / metros / railways / busses, everywhere. As Hong Kong is a city built on and for business this is propably the best place for RIM and the BlackBerry to gather more business users.

Besides the well established carriers you can also get a BlackBerry without contract nearly everyhwere on the street. Quite some months ago I got a BlackBerry Pearl there which was actually imported from the UK and branded to T-Mobile UK. The propably best place to get the newest BlackBerry (and also other mobile phone, computer, anything gadget) is in Kowloon’s shopping area (around Nathan Rd.) which is located in the north of Hong Kong Island. It is a pulsating place with lots of visitors, different cultures, shops, dealers - you can get everything there. As mentioned before, Hong Kong does not levy duty on imports, those imported devices are very cheap compared to other regions in the world. So if you are looking for a BlackBerry without service (may be you already have one or you don’t need one) you check out this place. Tip: Don’t buy the first price, mostly you can palter to get the really best price.