This sums it all Thats what you get to operate in India and how they have come from their “strong stance” They have now agreed to allow access to to their Blackberry servers.

“They have in principle agreed to provide us recorded data from their servers,” it quoted an interior ministry official as saying.Now they have assured us that they will discuss the issue first among themselves and find a way to meet our demands. Later, they would be providing live access to BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server),”

I apologize for this rather crude portrayal but this best sums up what Blackberry’s “executives” were crowing about earlier. I have covered this issue extensively earlier here and here.

Update: This has been reported on Fast Company too.

I quote a section of it verbatim:

There is no doubt that RIM will get stick for this decision–after all, being seen to be cavalier with one’s customer data is just not cricket. However, they are in an inenviable situation. India is an important market for RIM, which is on course for sales of around 600,000 units by the end of 2010–that’s 5% of the country’s smartphone market.

This is the reason why Blackberry is “bending down”. I don’t remain a fan of their handsets because I find them useless in terms of customization or use. In any case, for the technically oriented, I prefer to use IMAP_IDLE protocol which shifts the mail almost instantaneously to my synced devices. Which also means that the main reason for having a Blackberry vanishes because it was their “mail offering” which made all the difference. With the servers now “live” and push email being replaced by the “protocol”, I find no reason why should anyone pay a premium for that product.

This also explains the slew of advertisements all across the television for their product.

Update 2: RIM denies any involvement with the Indian Government. This is because it would otherwise hurt their share market in other parts of the world. Not knowing fully well that they allow full access to middle east countries where they were rapped on their knuckles and their testicles held till they turned blue.

That’s what is called as “foot in the mouth”!

Here’s what they have to crow about: (emphasis mine)

RIM has once again found it necessary to address certain media reports in India containing inaccurate and misleading statements and information based on unsubstantiated claims from unnamed sources….Our customers can be reassured that the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution continues to be the gold standard for security-conscious organizations in India and worldwide. All our discussions with the Government of India have been and continue to be productive and fully consistent with the four core principles we follow in addressing lawful access matters around the world. Any suggestion to the contrary is false

This is classic corporate gibberish. Which in effect should be interpreted as:

The Indian Government screwed our happiness and threatened us with a ban. Keeping in mind your sensibilities and our pathetic market share, we were afraid that this would affect our future sales and possibly carefully crafted brand image. When we were summoned to the offices, we were shitting in our pants and pissing all over while the Indians screwed us from behind and twisted our little puny testicles. We agreed immediately to all of their demands including complete access to our servers, offices, files, records and gave each one of them our crappy product for “testing purposes”. Because we need to lick the Indian’s asses since they feed our kids (and mistresses) therefore we have allowed full access to your corporate emails and communication including details of YOUR mistresses

Apologies but it drives me mad…

Blackberry India should be the front line nominee for this year’s ASSHOLE OF THE YEAR AWARD

.