Koreans was able to share their own BlackBerry-style joy offered by SamSung AnyCall’s BlackJack and Mirage smart-phones, their precursor to Android Galaxies ..
circa 2006 BlackBerry landed on Korean shores through expensive TRS network from KT PowerTel and mostly used by corporates and expatriates .
second try was via South Korea’s second cellular SK Telecom but was still geared towards businessmen . the curious bought from curiosity but was soon dubbed “pretty garbage” from private sector realizing it cannot even use Kakao Talk – an emerging messaging app on iOS as well as Android that soon dominated the Penninsula .
the introduction of iPhone and its belated influx onto South Korea also marked the grave-stone for BlackBerry . they actually “blinked” when they rid of their trade-mark miniature keyboard, to instead put it into the LCD screen . but as in the plot-twist movie Sixth Sense : they didn’t know or could not except they were already dead, and tried to emerge from the grave using what-ever means ..
on their down-slope falling, fallen and fell-years : BlackBerry instigated a last-ditch effort to target a niche group of early-adoptor-wanna-be consumers, which could have only worked in AND actually did work for about a year in South Korea – now a superficial culture evidently a side-effect of a nation having developed too swiftly from the ashes of a series of civil wars and onto the BroadBand-connected Millennium . they began a two-year spree to sponsor local TV series and even movies manically, to the point where virtually ALL top casts would be using a BlackBerry phone – umph could you imagine that ?! note TV series in Korea as well as neighboring Japan is dubbed drama, nomatter whether they are soap opera or action material .
- New Heart : medical TV series broadcast December 12 2007 ~ February 28 2008 on MBC.
- iris 2 : action espionage Wednesday & Thursday TV series broadcast October 14 ~ December 17 2009 on KBS 2.Vampire Prosecutor : cable-channel drama about a prosecutor who turned into a vampire after a suspicious traffic accident ; Season 1 aired October 2 2011 ~ Season 2 finalized November 18 2012 on OCN.
- Promise of a Thousand Days : Monday & Tuesday TV series on Alzheimer’s disease aired October 17 ~ December 20 2011 on SBS.
- Dream High 2 : high-school TV series broadcast January 30 ~ March 20 2012 on KBS.
- Man at the Equator : passionate Wednesday & Thursday TV series broadcast March 21 ~ May 24 2012 on KBS 2.
- Thieves is a Korean movie released July 25 2012 about a diamond heist in Hong Kong . below from their final epilog scene and a promotion event giving-away two BlackBerries :
BlackBerry had announced early February they will retreat from neighboring Japan by the end of the Month . rumours rose that they might also be closing down Korea, to which BlackBerry denied and instead announced through local media they were preparing for their next models Z10 and Q10 ; then it became known today they closed their Korea office last Month without any Official announcement (while product support will be held by their local carrier SK Telecommunication).
rising in North America as a cool device to message business barely a decade ago, it has fallen to the lowest of its species in the Far-East – among those that manufacture, connect and service . by HALO-jumping onto a unique-perceived customer-base and trying sell through flash-marketing by sponsoring local movie and TV series .. only to leave quietly over-night in a few years .
so here is our dear message from Korea Tech BLog :
